


Satin Town

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:30:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 89,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma Swan meets the evil queen, raising her son in a fairy tale land inexplicably located in Maine. Soon she's a prisoner in the castle, embroiled in royal politics and a curse with no end in sight, and navigating a volatile relationship with a queen who's determined to see her dead. </p><p>It'd be helpful if she weren't so attracted to her, probably.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to [Liz](http://misswan.tumblr.com) for looking over this chapter and talking out this story with me in the first place. I'm probably going to update this fic weekly until it's finished, when possible. This is a new fandom for me and I'm very out of my comfort zone, so I'd appreciate any feedback y'all can give me!

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

On nights like these, it’s easier to shut out the world than consider where she’s going or what she’s doing. She doesn’t make a habit of drinking too much, not while her one means of fulfillment is dependent on her being alert and wary, and bears the emptiness that never stops tugging at her heart with well-honed practice. She thinks little of love and family and focuses only on her next job.

 

But tonight’s her birthday and it feels almost dishonest to deny that there’s a void within her, a severe lack of… _something_ she’s been searching for for a lifetime. And when she makes a wish on a cupcake she’d bought herself, her mind wanders to a desire she’d never admit aloud. _I don’t want to be alone tonight_.

 

The doorbell rings.

 

She blinks, wondering if the new neighbors had given someone the wrong address again. But no, when she opens the door there’s a little boy standing behind it, simmering with contained eagerness and staring at her expectantly. He’s wearing an odd little brown cloak that dips past his knees and is baggy over grey boots and a sewn tunic, and she thinks for a moment that he must have come from the theater around the corner before he speaks. “Are you Emma Swan?”

 

“Yeah. Who are you?”

 

He squirms, but his eyes are still intent on her, and she gets the distinct impression that he’s decided she passes muster before he responds, “My name’s Henry. I’m your son.”

 

 --

 

For a kid who doesn’t seem to know how to dress normally, he’s pretty confident- or maybe it’s her own disorientation at this development that lets him get the better of her. He forces his way into her apartment and her fridge and makes bold threats about how he isn’t leaving, and for a moment she can admit that there might be some family resemblance there.

 

“For a kid who dresses like a reject from Lord of the Rings opening night, you’re pretty savvy,” she retorts when he insists he’ll tell the police she kidnapped him, oh-so-smug.

 

He wrinkles his brow. “This is all different. I knew about your metal carriages and money, but the clothes are weird here. And the people. A man on the carriage tried to get me to come to his home instead of here.”

 

Something within her twitches uncomfortably at the thought of this child venturing into a strange city, vulnerable and confused and searching for her. “Yeah, strangers here aren’t all going to be your friends.”

 

“It was okay.” He downs half a cup of orange juice and makes a face. “I showed him my dagger and he went away.”

 

“Is that some kind of euphemism? Because you are much too young for- _Kid_!” She jumps backward instinctively, staring at what is certainly a dagger that he’s suddenly brandishing at her. It’s small and sleek with a jeweled handle and a sharp edge, and the _Keep away from children!_ warning label is a given. She’d _think_.

 

“The Huntsman gave it to me,” he says, tucking it away. He catches her eye where she’s still standing, stunned, and lowers his head. “Okay, I took it from his collection when he wasn’t looking. But my tutor says that you should never go on a journey unprepared!”

 

“With a _dagger_?” She snatches his bag from him, ignoring his “hey!” when she retrieves the weapon from it. “What the hell kind of place did you grow up in?”

 

He dips his head, sullen. “Lots of kids have weapons. Mother just doesn’t let me have any of my own because ‘I won’t need them.’”

 

“Damn right you won’t. You live on some kind of Comic Con commune?” She watches with vague approval when he disposes of his cup in the garbage, unasked. The kid might wind up being a psychopath, but at least he has decent manners.

 

“Something like that.” He shrugs. “Mother has Internet, though. She doesn’t let anyone else have it, but she says it’s important that I learn about your world.”

 

“ _My_ world?” It had been a closed adoption and for good reason, but when she’d meant to give her baby the chances she’d never had, she hadn’t thought he’d be taken in by a medievalist cult. Or wherever Henry had come from. “Listen, kid, I’m gonna take you home.”

 

“Okay,” he says agreeably.

 

“Where’s home?”

 

“Storybrooke, Maine.” He beams at her for a moment under that silly costume, and she shakes her head, amused.

 

“Seriously?” These people take roleplaying their fantasies to a whole new level, and she feels a sudden pang, thinking about this boy who could have been her son being brainwashed by them. And when she heads for the car, Henry trailing behind, she finally admits to herself that she cares just enough to make sure that Henry is safe, wherever his home is.

 

\--

 

Henry is fascinated by the front seat of her car. “You can see straight ahead!” he marvels. “Like sitting in a carriage but so much faster. You must miss seeing all the animals!”

                                                                                                              

“You sit in carriages a lot?”

 

He shrugs. “Well, there isn’t much land to cover. But Mother and I go for rides in the afternoons while she surveys the kingdom.” He frowns, and she can’t tear her eyes away from the troubled look on his face. “Not always, though. Not when she-“ He breaks off, staring out the window again.

 

 _I can’t care_ , Emma reminds herself, but she musses his hair a little with her free hand and says, “Seems like she takes good care of you.” He’s healthy and bright-eyed and smart enough to make it from his fantasyland commune to Boston, and even if his mother’s a little weird, she can’t deny that.

 

Well, that and the fact that his mother had somehow lost track of him for long enough for him to steal weaponry and sneak down to Boston.

 

Henry’s face is dark when she glances to her right again, his hands clutching his satchel as he responds. “No, she doesn’t. She’s evil.”

 

“Oh-kay.” It isn’t her business if she’d gotten in the middle of some family spat, but Henry keeps talking, and she can’t stop listening. _Not my business. Not my business. Not my-_ “I’m sure your mother loves you very much, no matter what you argued about.”Was she always this terrible with kids? Because Henry is shaking now, and his eyes are getting round and watery and she thinks he might cry. Jesus, she has no idea what to do if he cries.

 

But he doesn’t say anything, and she’s quiet too, shaking off stirrings of guilt at having _cared_ again for this little boy who seems so bold and terrified all at once and looks at her like she hangs the moon when she’s done nothing to deserve it. She focuses on the road again, stealing glances at Henry every few minutes, and she starts to see it- the set of his jaw, so similar to hers. That thick brown hair just a touch shorter than Ne- than his father had worn it. The shape of his eyes, narrowed and stubborn like she’s seen in the mirror a thousand times.

                                                                                                                          

She remembers the baby she’d barely held in her arms before giving him away and marvels at the little boy who belongs to someone else, and it’s impossible not to get lost in old, bitter memories as they drive along.

 

Then Henry speaks, and she’s jolted into this new reality again. “She can’t love anyone,” he replies at last. “Even me.”

 

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

 

He’s staring at her when she looks at him, his gaze knowing and just a little scornful. “Have you ever met an evil queen?”

 

She laughs aloud, unable to restrain her disbelief this time, and quiets only when Henry’s face falls.

 

\--

 

“You need to leave your carriage here,” Henry announces when they finally near Storybrooke.

 

“Car,” she corrects him, slowing. “Where’s your house?” There are no streetlights, and only a faint glow of the moon lights up the town ahead. If she squints ahead, she can just barely make out a thick wood in front of them.

 

“Past the edge of the forest. But there are no roads for cars in the kingdom.”

 

“Are you kidding me?” But now that she’s looking for it, she can see the narrow dirt pathway just past the town line. “This really is a commune, isn’t it.” Complete with evil queens and carriages and- “A _castle_?” It’s lit from the inside with a glow warmer than your standard electricity, but it’s enough to illuminate the tall stone towers high above the trees.

 

Henry smirks in the darkness. “Told you she’s a queen.”

 

 “Aren’t you cute.” She twitches her lips at him, unamused. “Anything else you want to tell me about this town?”

 

He lifts his head high, turning smartly and leading the way into the woods. “I don’t think you’re ready for the rest yet. Not until you see it for yourself.”

 

\--

 

She sees it.

 

She doesn’t quite know if she’s ready to believe it just yet, though, not when Henry is leading her through a forest- an _enchanted_ forest, he tells her- and pointing out huts and chattering about the occupants as though this is all _normal_ , as though these people aren’t living five miles away from a normally lit highway and a gas station by a Wendy’s and how can an entire town be so entrenched in this fairytale fiction?

 

“No one crosses town lines,” Henry explains, which isn’t an explanation at all and everything inside her is rebelling at the idea of consigning this boy back to a world so delusional.

 

The forest parts after a half hour of walking, and Emma has no idea how she’s going to find her way back through it, but she’s distracted from her thoughts by the castle towering in front of them, separating the woods on either side to create spacious grounds. “We’re home,” Henry announces, bounding forward to run across the lawn to the front door.

 

“Did the adoption people even check out where you lived before they gave you away?” Emma mutters, following him into the castle. There’s a guard dressed in armor (armor! Like it’s the fucking Middle Ages!) at the entrance, but when Henry waves her in, the guard steps back as well. She eyeballs him for a minute, staring at him in a vain attempt to see if he’s as aware of how ridiculous this is as she is, but his face remains an impassive mask.

 

“Emma!” Henry pops out from an upstairs balcony and she hurries up, following him through elaborately decorated halls with suits of armor and embroidered tapestries, past enormous rooms with even higher ceilings, all the way to their right until they reach a set of double doors at the end of the hallway. Whoever had designed this fantasy must have been fabulously wealthy, she’s certain, and clearly had too much time on their hands. _Evil queen, indeed._

 

“Where’s your mom?” Emma asks, as Henry pushes open the doors and reveals a library straight out of a storybook. They’re surrounded by tall shelves, high up the walls and reaching a second-floor balcony. Portraits dot the walls and the windows are stained glass images of kings and queens and animals, and when Emma squints around she can even see tables up the stairs with quills and scrolls on them. The only anachronism is the laptop at an old-fashioned sitting table near them, hooked up to wires that lead directly into a box that is-

 

She blinks, but the box is still casting off a purple light that dances wildly inside the box, flickering in and out and changing colors as she watches. “Not your grandma’s wifi, huh?”

 

Henry turns to her with a quizzical look. “What’s a wifi?”

 

“Never mind.”

 

“Henry!” There’s a loud sound like books toppling over, and a bird chirps somewhere near the windows as a woman comes into view. She’s fair-skinned and dark-haired and would have been very pretty if not for the worry that darkens her face as she runs to them, throwing her arms around Henry and pulling him tight to her. “I’ve been worried sick! Where have you been? The guards have been searching the forest for hours, but we feared you-“ She stops short, her eyes widening as she catches sight of Emma. “Henry, what have you _done_?”

 

“Uh, hi,” Emma begins, feeling suddenly silly for worrying about Henry’s well being. This woman clearly loves him, and while she might have surrounded herself with the most unimaginable fantasy, there’s no doubting the softness in her eyes when she looks at her son.

 

“I found her!” Henry announces, pulling out of the woman’s grasp. “I found my birth mother!”

 

“And you brought her _here_?” The woman’s voice goes high, almost unnaturally so, and when she looks at Emma again Emma can see something familiar and almost chilling in her eyes. _Fear_. And she knows instinctively that this woman isn’t afraid of her, but for her.

 

She sticks out her hand, awkward. “I…uh. I’m Emma.”

 

“Emma,” the woman echoes, and the fear in her gaze intensifies, coupled with something Emma can’t read altogether. “Your name is Emma.” The woman glances at Henry for a moment, then back at Emma, and now there’s wonder in her voice. “Henry…”

 

“I’m so sorry for interrupting your family, but…” Emma shrugs a little, nodding to Henry in explanation. And there’s something just sweet and welcoming about this woman that she ventures further. “I’d, um…I’d love to hear more about this place. Is this a commercial thing, like a tourist attraction or something?”

 

“Oh!” The woman shakes herself out of her daze and blinks at her. “I’m not Henry’s mother. I’m his tutor.” She takes Emma’s hand with the tip of hers, resting her fingers lightly on Emma’s palm as she curtsies. “My name is Snow.”

 

“Snow. As in…Snow White?” Emma guesses. A castle full of fairytale characters? Someone must be making money off this, and an artificial fairytale tourist trap is a relief compared to the cult theory. Henry’s just a kid, of course he’d believe it’s all real, but it’s something he’ll grow out of in time.

 

But there’s nothing artificial about the way that Snow jerks. “Then you know me!” she exclaims, rising again. “You know about the curse!”

 

“Curse?” Emma repeats.

 

“You’re Emma!” Snow says, her eyes shining. “And you know about the curse!”

 

And then this stranger is hugging her like she’d been hugging Henry moments before as though vacuum-welded to her, and Emma can’t breathe for a minute before she finally manages, “Not that I have a problem with unconditional affection from strangers or anything, but what curse? What are you talking about?”

 

Snow lets go almost reluctantly, her eyes tracing Emma’s face as she does, and when Henry finally says, “She doesn’t know,” the other woman releases her fully. 

 

“I see,” she murmurs, stepping back. Her eyes widen again. “But you can’t be here! Henry, what were you thinking, bringing her here? If the queen finds out, she’ll-“

 

 “Really, Snow, what did you think I’d do?” a voice made of steel drawls from the doorway, and before Emma can turn around, she’s being thrown through the air by a freak windstorm that comes from nowhere, pinning both her and Snow against the closest wall of books. “You lose my son, and now you’re entertaining outsiders? Don’t we all know how this ends?”

 

 _She_ steps forward, and there’s no doubt in Emma’s mind, even while held immobile by this unnatural wind, that she’s met Henry’s evil queen at last. “I keep you alive so that you may know suffering as I have,” the queen says, her voice silky with quiet rage. “But there are better, more…creative ways to cause you pain.” She drags out each word, and when Emma can tear her eyes away from her, she sees that Snow is regarding the queen with fear and… _compassion_.

 

The queen’s eyes narrow, and Emma is seized with the insane desire to deflect her fury from the far-too-kind woman beside her. “Hey. Hey!”

                                                                                                                                        

The queen turns, an eyebrow raised in delicate disbelief that teeters somewhere on the edge of utter fury. “She didn’t do anything,” Emma feels obliged to respond, straining to get the words out while the impossible pressure still holds her to the wall. “I came here with-“ She reconsiders, catching sight of Henry’s frightened, defiant face. “I came here on my own.”

 

“ _That_ is impossible.” The queen abruptly shifts direction to saunter over to Emma, eyes glittering against another perfectly featured face. She stands in front of Emma, so close that Emma can feel her warm breath ghosting over her face. “What are you here to find, I wonder? Who sent you? That bastard Rumpelstiltskin?”

 

“The guy with the name?” Emma says dumbly. This is ridiculous. This whole town is ridiculous, but she’s beginning to admit to herself that this isn’t a freak wind holding her in place, and this woman has every bit the presence of an evil queen. “He’s real too?”

 

“Oh, don’t act the fool,” the queen purrs. “It’s so very…unbecoming.” She reaches out to touch Emma’s face, tracing her cheekbone down along the line of her jaw, and Emma’s skin tingles with every caress as though seared by living flames. “It’s no use, whatever your motives here. You will be quite the addition to my hall.” She waves her hand and the pressure is gone, and Emma is falling forward and slamming into the queen’s outstretched palm.

 

The queen draws her other hand back, two fingers outstretched with purpose Emma can’t comprehend, and she brings them forward just as Henry shouts, “Mother, no!”

 

And just like that, the hand is stilled, and Emma draws her knees up to attack the other woman, seething at the way she’d gotten the better of her so easily. But when Emma kicks upward, the queen is already walking away, hurrying toward Henry with renewed purpose. And when she wraps him in a hug as tight as the one Snow had given him, Emma can only stare. “Where have you been?” she demands, pulling away from him. It’s harsher than Snow’s words, and there’s a wild fear there in the catch of her voice, imperious as it’s meant to be.

 

“I found Emma,” Henry says, and he isn’t frightened anymore. He’s staring at his mother, stubborn and unyielding, and Emma is suddenly very afraid of what the queen might do to him if he says anything else. “She’s my mother.”

 

The queen turns back to Emma, her face thunderous. “ _You_ are the woman who gave birth to Henry?”

 

Some deep-seated sense of self-preservation reacts to that, and Emma can suddenly force a smile onto her face and form normal words again. “Henry managed to hunt me down in Boston. I was just giving him a ride home, but I’ll be heading back now.”

 

She sees his face fall but refuses to assure him that she isn’t going anywhere, that she won’t leave this town until she can ensure Henry’s safety- with or without this terrifying mother of his. There are things he’s better off not knowing, especially while he’s still a slave to the whims of a mercurial queen.

 

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” the queen retorts. “Your vehicle has been removed from the kingdom’s entrance. No one leaves to the world outside, not after seeing what is here. You will grace my hall with your presence.”

 

“No!” Henry almost shouts, and then he’s throwing himself forward and wrapping himself around Emma, impotent little arms tight around her as he buries his face in her stomach. She touches his hair with the tips of her fingers, wondering at the way that his hug can make her hurt more than the queen’s threats do. “No, Mother, please don’t do this! Please don’t take her away!”

 

And Snow speaks for the first time since the queen had threatened her, soft and persuasive. “Regina, he’ll never forgive you.” Emma glances at her, the woman she’d only known of from storybooks as a gentle princess, never a servant in the evil queen’s palace with eyes steely and determined to save a woman she barely knows.

 

The queen- _Regina_ \- stalks over to Snow and slaps her once, leaving pale skin red where her hand had hit. “Very well,” she says, and she doesn’t look at either Henry or Emma as she speaks. “The Huntsman will escort you at all times. You will not leave the castle grounds. You will not speak to Henry.” Henry’s mouth opens in protest, but Emma shakes her head once before he can provoke his mother. His mouth closes. “If you do either, you will be thrown into the cell where you belong.” She walks past Emma, a cold smile crossing her face. “I suspect our…problem will resolve itself soon enough.”

 

The words are a threat but the tone is a promise, and she tenses against Henry’s arms, watching the satiny red material of the queen’s dress hug her body as she saunters out. “Henry, you’re to go to your room immediately. You will meet me in the gardens at dawn to discuss your punishment.”

 

“Yes, Mother,” Henry mumbles, letting go of Emma and tossing her one final look before he scurries out of the room, Regina’s hand settling on his shoulder and clenching as they walk.

 

And when they’re gone, Snow murmurs the one thing on Emma’s mind as well. “She surrendered too quickly.”

 

This is far from over.


	2. Chapter 2

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

_Magic is real here. Here is a fairytale land. The boy I gave birth to is being raised by an evil queen._ It’s been her mantra all night, the last words she’d thought last night and the first she contemplates this morning.

 

She’s always been quick to adapt- her childhood and pregnancy in prison allowed nothing less- but today she’s still reeling from last night, shaking and staring at stone walls and wondering how any of this can be true.

 

She awakens in a spare room that’s probably only a step up from a dungeon, the walls bare and her blanket thin and smelling vaguely of sheep. The doors are locked from the outside and when the Huntsman comes to collect her, she’s still sitting up in her cot dressed in the grey shift she’d been given, staring out the window in a sort of dazed bemusement.

                                                                                                                                  

“Snow gave me clothing for you,” he says, holding a pile out to her.

 

Emma looks at him- really looks, for the first time, since last night she’d barely seen more than his back leading her up corridors higher and higher in the castle until she hadn’t been entirely sure that she wasn’t about to be pushed out of a tower. He’s tall, bearded, and seems vaguely irritated.

 

“Sorry you got stuck with babysitting duty,” she ventures, accepting the clothing. Snow has given her a dress that she stares at with horror before moving it to find an overlong tunic and a pair of pants similar to Henry’s from last night. Much more acceptable. “You’d probably rather be…hunting, I guess.”

 

He lets out a raspy laugh from deep in his throat. “What I’d rather isn’t relevant anymore. I belong to the queen. And I failed both her and her son last night, so I pay the price.”

 

He turns brusquely. “Get dressed if you want to leave this room today.”

 

The door slams behind him and Emma regards the clothing again, repeating her mantra in a whisper as she sniffs the tunic and catches another farm animal scent. But the cloth is cool against her skin and surprisingly soft, and when she’s fully dressed she feels like maybe she wouldn’t be terrible in a fight in this outfit. The queen might have magic that can overpower Emma with a command, but she’s still determined to be ready if it ever comes down to fists and kicks again.

 

She’s stretching her limbs, testing her reach with semi-restrictive material holding her knees and shoulders back, when she hears the door open behind her. She keeps stretching, waiting for the Huntsman to speak and feeling his eyes on her as she punches outward again and again.

 

He doesn’t say anything, and after a few minutes she’s feeling bold enough to ask, “So, can I have a tour of the castle today?” Armories, escape routes, wherever Henry is hidden away today- those are her priorities, though she isn’t naive enough to tell this to the man who’s said so frankly that he belongs to the queen.

 

He snorts. “I’m not a guide. Tour it yourself.”

 

_Well._

 

\--

 

She walks down every hallway, checks every open door that the Huntsman doesn’t stop her from entering, and climbs every staircase she can, memorizing the layout of the castle as she does. She isn’t ready to leave yet, not until she sees Henry again, but she’s also cautious enough to plan her escape route in advance. Regina doesn’t seem the kind of queen who’d let her go with a wave and a goodbye.

 

The bottommost floors are more like catacombs than a basement, and she wonders how much of the town they snake out under. She doesn’t explore them in depth, not when she hits a closed door in the hall and the Huntsman gives her a knowing look and suggests that they return upstairs.

 

She returns to the library in hopes of seeing Henry there, but neither he nor Snow are sitting at the table today. Instead, a blond man is leaning over the laptop, his brow furrowed as he types.

 

“I didn’t know the queen lets anyone use her computer.” It’s meant to be a murmur to the Huntsman, but it’s loud and accusing in the silence of the library.

                                                                                                                                             

The man looks up with a sneer. “I am not merely _anyone_ ,” he snaps, straightening. “I am the palace physician and Her Majesty requires that I be educated in all matters of illness and health.” He eyes her. “And you are…”

 

“An outsider,” the Huntsman cuts in, putting a hand on Emma’s arm to steer her out of the room. The last thing she sees when she follows his lead is the doctor’s face turned suddenly thoughtful, and the whisper of a response.

 

“Then we have that in common.”

 

She asks the Huntsman for clarification, but he shrugs uncomfortably. “She crosses worlds and finds new men to do her bidding. I won’t be the one to ask her about it.” He raises an eyebrow, his eyes sparkling with what she can only describe after seeing it all morning as morbid amusement. “Why don’t you try?”

 

She narrows her eyes, unimpressed. “And you? She got you from around here, didn’t she?”

 

“I was given an mission I couldn’t carry out. She took my…she took me.”

 

This she remembers, vague as her knowledge of fairytales is. “She sent you to kill Snow White.”

 

He startles, something in his face closing and his expression guarded again. “Yes.” He quickens his pace, and she trails after him, not ready to cap this discussion just yet. The Huntsman is her only guide to this world now, no matter what he says, and she needs all the help she can get. Knowledge, in this case, might be the only thing that’ll help her survive.

 

“You said the queen took you. What does that mean?” The Huntsman moves even faster, and she hurries behind him, matching his pace as he storms on. “How could she force you to work for her?”

 

He stops at last, so quickly that she nearly crashes into him. “She took my heart from my chest,” he says. “She took it captive, and as long as it is hers, so am I.” He walks to the railing that overlooks the main hall where she’d entered the castle a day before. “I gave Snow her life and the queen took mine in revenge.” Emma moves to stand beside him, and watches his eyes soften. “But Snow still lives.”

 

Emma stares down at the statues that dot the room below, at the guard who stands at the door and the elaborate decorations on the wall. “Are you two…uh…?”

 

He laughs, acerbic again. “No. But she was good and selfless, and as long as she lives my sacrifice was not in vain.” Then he’s silent again, and nothing she says can prompt him to speak.

 

She walks down the staircase and he doesn’t follow, though she can feel his gaze on her from above and she wonders at his motivations. He isn’t a willing servant to the queen- does Regina have any, really? The doctor, maybe, whom she trusts with their only connection to the outside world. Certainly not Snow, whose story mirrors the one she knows up until the victory over the queen.

 

And how then did this all end, with the Huntsman a servant and Snow a tutor, with the queen established in her little kingdom with no other contenders? And more pressing, how does Henry tie in to all this? What kind of plan must she have for him?

 

She wanders the hall, rolling her eyes at the guard who draws a sword every time she nears. She wonders if he’d been punished for letting her in yesterday, and almost immediately feels a pang, thinking of the Huntsman and wondering if this guard, too, is as caged as the rest of them.

 

Though they seem innocuous from far, the statues are the most unnerving decorations in the room. The first one she sees is a man dressed in tight pants and a shirt that looks almost modern in comparison with what she’s seen here so far, his mouth open in a scream and his eyes wide in terror. The next looks nearly as terrified, a woman with sunglasses perched at the top of her head and a…tank top?

 

She swallows, a dark suspicion chilling her, and hurries to the next. It’s a stone statue of what must be only a teenager, his eyes tightly shut and his lips pressed together, and the detail is fine enough to make her stiffen, eyes narrowed and her heart pounding as she reads the name of the band on his t-shirt.

 

 _“You will be quite the addition to my hall.”_ She remembers Regina’s eyes, dark and threatening as she had prepared to do…something? Something Emma understands now, looking at all these relics of the past years that Storybrooke has been in Maine, at all these people who had stumbled across the town and been petrified to stone for their misstep. She would have been installed in this hall by now too had it not been for Henry and Snow’s intervention. She might still be.

 

She moves from statue to statue, suddenly desperate to memorize their faces, to envision their impotent struggle as Regina moved ever closer, to imagine their terror and confusion in that moment. She can’t afford to feel for them but she can’t seem to stop, either, can’t keep herself from aching for these poor people who probably had so much more to live for than she ever had and now have nothing at all.

 

She pauses at the last statue, standing tall in the space between the two staircases upstairs, and sees the differences there at once. This one is dressed in armor and holds a sword out, a vision from a fairytale rather than a hapless tourist. And while the others are all terrified, crying out for help or surrendered to despair, the final statue’s face is almost satisfied, as though whatever comes next is meaningless. He stares straight ahead and there’s a tiny smile curving his lips, and Emma is drawn to him in ways she can’t explain.

 

“His name is Charming,” comes a soft voice from her left, and when Emma turns, Snow is approaching, her eyes on the statue’s face.

 

“What happened?” There’s no mistaking the love with which Snow regards the statue, in the way she traces its features with one cupped palm.

 

Snow shakes her head. “He fell…Regina took him in those last minutes before the curse set in.” She smiles, half-hearted. “I suppose it was a relief to see him here, once I recovered from the shock of it. I’d feared he was dead.”

 

“I’m sorry.” There’s nothing more she can say, and she feels more and more distant and invested in this world at the same time. Prince Charming, a stone sculpture of final defiance within a town that shouldn’t exist. Had it only been a day since she’d been sitting in her apartment, alone in the world on her birthday? She’s still alone, but here there are people who’ve cared- who care about each other and the greater good more than the cynic in her would have accepted ever before. But this is a land with magic, and now she can believe in a huntsman or a prince who would choose to fight for what he believed in. “This curse…it’s why you’re here, right? Here in Maine.”

 

“Here in the castle,” Snow adds, stepping away from the statue. “We were…we had won. She was exiled, we were all safe at last, I was expecting a child…” She touches her stomach for a moment, almost unconsciously. “She took away our happy endings and built a world around herself. And we’ve been frozen in time for almost three decades since, locked into this castle or the woods and living under her thumb.” She sighs heavily, and Emma’s afraid to ask what had happened to the child.

                                                                                                                                                        

Snow offers the information anyway. “The baby… we sent her away from Regina, out of this eternal hell. Rumpelstiltskin had claimed that she was the savior, that she could break the curse once she came back.”

 

“But she didn’t,” Emma guesses, and Snow stares at her, inscrutable.

 

“That remains to be seen.”

 

Then the baby hadn’t returned yet, might never return, and Emma swallows, more acquainted with that particular level of pain today than she had ever been before. “How is Henry today?” she asks, glancing up at the Huntsman to see if he’s on guard at the question. He’s looking past them, out the long rectangular windows that look out on the castle grounds.

 

Snow smiles, old tragedy replaced with understanding. “He’s happy you’re here. His mother has forbidden that he leave his room today, but his spirits are high and he can’t stop talking about you.”

 

Emma shakes her head. “Is he even aware of what he’s brought on both of us?”

 

Snow reaches out, laying a hand on her arm. “He’s still young, and he believes in happy endings so fervently. He doesn’t understand the risk in bringing you here.”

 

“No, I guess not.” And she can’t begrudge him for seeking her out, now that she’s met his mother and knows just a fraction of what he must know about her. She remembers huddled in assorted foster homes as a child, dreaming about her parents coming back at last and sweeping her away to somewhere where she belonged. She’d been naïve and optimistic, and it had taken the world knocking her down time and again before she stopped believing.

 

Even now, there’s a part of her that’s equally determined that Henry should never suffer that.

 

\--

 

She’s sitting in the library at sunset, flipping through a book without focusing on the words. She eyes the computer for what must be the third time in the past half hour, but this time she ventures, “If I use it, will you stop me?”

 

The Huntsman ignores her, which she takes as permission. She considers her situation. Her phone had died last night when she’d tried to make a call, and this is her only connection to the outside world. On the other hand, who’s out there that she can contact, anyway? There had been a statue of a state trooper in the main hall, taunting her with the reminder that magic is beyond the law. No one’s waiting for her, no one’s going to come after her. She’s on her own, and the Internet won’t spare her.

 

She slumps in her seat at that realization, freed from her to hover mockingly at the edge of her consciousness, a constant reminder of how little she matters. Of how alone she is in the world.

 

Here, at least, there’s a little boy who can’t stop talking about her, who she can’t stop thinking about. _Maybe I’m better off as a prisoner of an evil queen_ , she muses, and smirks at the idea.

 

Said evil queen comes striding into the library a half hour later in a whirl of purple velvet and lace, and when she sees Emma, her smile widens into something dark and predatory. “Well, well, well. Hello, Miss Swan. I hope you’ve been enjoying my palace and its…amenities.” Her eyes glitter, and Emma is suddenly certain that the queen has heard all about her time in the hall.

 

She forces herself to smile. “It’s a nice castle,” she agrees, smiling back coolly. “I’m glad Henry’s grown up with so much…space.”

 

“Indeed.” Regina walks closer, and Emma tenses, but instead the other woman reclines on the seat opposite the one where Emma’s sitting, the queen a picture of confident superiority and grace. “He has lacked for nothing. He’s been given an education fit for a prince, he trains with the best instructors with his bow, and I’ve also ensured that he be prepared in the event that we ever find ourselves leaving the kingdom.” She nods to the laptop, almost casual. “Although it doesn’t seem like I’ll be run out of town by an angry mob anytime soon.” She laughs. It sounds cold and artificial and makes Emma’s hair stand on end.

                                                                                                               

“What about other kids?” she asks when it seems apparent that Regina has nothing more to say.

 

“Hm?”

 

“Other kids. Friends,” Emma clarifies. “Someone his own age to play with. Does he have anyone?” Regina stares at her blankly, and Emma can’t stop herself from continuing. “Look, you can go through the motions of whatever you think a kid needs, but Henry’s going to have some needs that you can’t fulfill by keeping him inside and away from everyone else.”

 

Regina’s face darkens. “Miss Swan, I love my son. I give him everything his heart desires, and if you’re trying to undermine me-“

 

“You locked him in his room and tried to turn his birth mother to stone in front of him!” she says, incredulous. “If that’s how love works, I’m glad no one ever loved me!”

 

Regina sits up, leaning forward. “Do not presume to tell me how to love my son,” she hisses. “You know _nothing_.” Her lip curls. “Did you think you could meet him for a few hours and know him? How much do you think he knows about you? He talks about you as though you’re some kind of savior, come here to rescue him from the monotony of princehood, but he knows nothing about you.” She stands, bending forward to look Emma in the eye. “I have done my research, Miss Swan. I know enough about you to crush Henry’s faith in you in an instant.”

 

Emma remembers a young girl, staring at a pregnancy test in a prison deep in Arizona, and she’s afraid for the boy with fragile dreams and a cruel mother. “You wouldn’t do that to him.”

 

It’s a wild hope more than anything, an optimism that nothing about Regina deserves, but it’s only a moment before Regina blinks and shakes her head, stepping back so Emma can rise. “I suppose there are simpler ways to keep you under control,” the queen agrees.

 

She strikes so swiftly that Emma doesn’t have a chance to defend herself before Regina’s fingers are sinking into her chest. And then she feels…

 

Different, something dark and intimate within her, and it’s cruel and painful but there’s something almost like warmth under the icy cold of the queen’s touch, a perverse sense of being _needed_ , being penetrated for her pure essence by another, and her head drops forward against Regina’s forehead, overcome by the sensation as her heart is stolen.

 

 _Is this how this should feel?_ she wonders, inane in the face of destruction. Her heart is throbbing in Regina's grasp and she can feel the hand contracting and expanding, in-out-in-out-in-out with every nerve in her body.  _Should it last this long?_ There’s a sheen of sweat covering Regina’s forehead now and the other woman’s hand is still inside her, pulling, pulling, as the warmth grows stronger and overcomes them both-

 

-And Regina is thrown backward by the force of it as something white and pure erupts from Emma, taking them both by surprise, and Emma clutches her chest and gasps for breath as Regina smashes against a glass window headfirst and lands in a heap on the ground in a shower of glass.

 

She’s torn between _What the hell was that?_ and _Oh god, I killed Henry’s mother_ before she can move again, the white energy still an afterimage in her eyes as she charges forward. “Regina!” The other woman is moaning, still out of it, and Emma drops down to inspect the damage. “Get the doctor!” she barks out to the Huntsman, kneeling over the woman.

 

“You’re a fool,” Regina mumbles, her eyes opening. There’s a piece of glass embedded in her forehead that has sliced a trail across one eyelid, and the blood is running down into them. Emma dabs at it with the edge of her tunic, trying to stop the flow. “I’m going to kill you, and you spend your last few moments alive here instead of running?”

 

Emma stares at her. “So, what, this is your plan? Pretend that I tried to hurt you and call it self-defense so Henry won’t hate you?”

 

“Push that cloth harder,” the queen orders. “And take the glass out. What, were you just going to keep it in there? And now I know that you’re one of Rumpelstiltskin’s agents, of course I’m going to kill you.” She grabs Emma’s wrist, flattening it against the side of her face. “Tell me, how did he find you? What did he promise you to betray Henry? _What was that magic you used_?"

 

“What?” She focuses on the wound, rather than the woman threatening her. “I didn’t do that magic thing! And you were trying to take my heart!”

 

“Well, _I_ didn’t stop myself,” Regina retorts, and Emma would have laughed had the situation not been so dire. The queen is almost humanized like this, still regal and commanding but more snippy than genuinely terrifying. “What enchantment do you have there that your heart is so protected?”

 

“Enchantment,” Emma repeats. She presses one hand over Regina’s face and yanks the glass with the other. “I made it into Crazy Town last night. No way I’m already all enchanted!”

 

Regina runs a hand over the cut, and it fades away to smooth skin in an instant. “Don’t play the fool, Miss Swan. It’s hardly becoming.” 

 

“I didn’t _do_ anything,” Emma protests. “Which is more than I can say for you!” She rubs her forehead, frustration and confusion and adrenaline combining into a doozy of a headache. When she looks up, Regina’s sitting up, reaching for her heart again.

 

“Ah!” The queen sags in the next moment, and only then can Emma see the shards of glass sticking out of her dress like spikes, some deep enough that they must be injuring her with every movement.

 

She’s about to order the queen onto her back (and there’s a part of her that’s vaguely enthralled by that concept, but she attributes it more to the dark corset teasing her than any genuine attraction to the paragon of cruelty in front of her) when the doctor arrives, the Huntsman behind him looking very amused at the two women glaring at each other on the floor.

 

“I will receive you in my quarters,” Regina says, and she somehow gathers herself and rises while Emma watches her dark gown darken further as the glass draws more blood. She tosses a single scathing glance backward before she leaves, and Emma glowers back. “ _You_ , I will deal with tomorrow. Take her back to her quarters, Huntsman.”

 

The doors to the library slam closed behind her, and when she voices the one question she still can, the Huntsman has no response.

 

“ _What did I do_?”

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

She’s still half asleep the next day when the door is flung open and Regina stalks into the room, tossing one last comment to the Huntsman over her shoulder. “She will wake when I command it."

 

“You’re the queen,” Emma agrees tiredly, sitting up on her cot and stretching. She’d slept better last night, even if she had spent a good hour staring at the ceiling last night, trying to make whatever had exploded from inside her to work again. “What now?”

 

Regina stalks closer, her eyes narrowed. “You will address me as _Your Majesty_.”

 

“Right.” Emma rubs her face with the balls of her hand, forcing wakefulness. “Um, I’m not really used to the whole royal thing. Sorry.” She stops mid-stretch, following the queen’s eyes down to her chest. “Please tell me you’re not going to try to pull out my heart again.”

 

Regina looks up, surprised. “Certainly not, Miss Swan. The sorcery you wrought had rather…disastrous effects last night.” As she speaks, though, her eyes are lowering again, right back to her chest, and Emma is about to say something when she realizes.

 

This isn’t a woman sizing up an opponent. Regina is without a doubt _checking her out_. Her clothes had been washed yesterday while she’d been gone, and she’d worn only a bra and underwear to bed, comfortable in the familiar feel of commercial mass-production that had probably never seen a farm. And now Regina can’t seem to tear her eyes away, even as goose bumps break out across Emma’s skin at her revelation.

 

It’s not that she’s interested in women- that she’s really thought about it either way, honestly- but Regina’s gaze is possessive and sharp, setting all her nerves on high alert and stimulating a pulse deep in her belly. And this is something she knows how to use when she remembers herself, and she slides out of her bed and straightens, watching the queen give her a subtle once-over before Emma speaks. “I told you, I don’t know what happened.”

 

Regina cocks her head, distracted. “What are you wearing? It’s indecent.”

 

“ _You complaining?”_ Emma bites the words back before she gets in even more trouble, though it seems a bad idea when something far worse escapes. “Like you’re one to talk.” Privately, she considers the queen’s wardrobe proof that magic does exist and she does have a very benevolent fairy godmother, but it seems hypocrisy that she’d criticize Emma’s underwear when her own assets are so proudly displayed.

 

Regina steps closer, and now that she’s on the topic Emma can’t stop staring at the ample cleavage thrust just under her face. “You will learn to fear me,” she hisses, a single finger running down from Emma’s neck along the curve of her left breast. Regina’s hand settles over grey lace, just about where her heart is thudding, and Emma aches with sudden, furious need. “Tell me how you did it. Who anchored your heart. Was it Rumpelstiltskin? The Blue Fairy?”

 

“N-“ The word dies in her throat as Regina’s hand tightens around her breast. She takes a deep breath, tries again. “No.”

 

Regina splays her other palm against Emma’s collarbone, her face darkening. “Was it… my mother?”

 

“No! I didn’t even know magic _existed_ until I got here!” Emma protests. Regina’s hands are warm against skin that feels like it’s burning, and when she slides her hand back into Emma to seize her heart again, Emma forgets how breathing works. There’s a tug that she feels just as acutely in her core as she does her heart, and then Regina is throwing her backward, turning on her heel and making her way to the door.

 

“Then you will go see my physician. Perhaps _he_ will have better luck,” she says. She turns, her face smug and cold. “Put some clothing on. As…entertaining as it is to see you dressed as a common slave, I won’t have you seducing my servants.”

 

“Who’s seducing anyone?” Emma calls after her. _If anything_ … She sinks to her bed, something deep within her throbbing with need, and it’s only the sound of the Huntsman’s voice outside that prompts her to dress herself.

 

Once they’re walking down dimly lit halls to wherever the doctor holds court, Emma ventures a question. “Do you know why Regina can’t-“ She makes a motion at her heart. “Not that I’m complaining,” she adds hastily, remembering the Huntsman’s fate.

 

He shrugs. “I’ve never seen her have any trouble before. She usually just pulls-” He yanks at his chest. “-And squeezes to dust.”

 

“Yikes.” She’s dodged a bullet, even if she has no idea how. And when she thinks about how absurd this is, how she’s actually relieved that the evil queen wasn’t able to grab her heart and pull it out of her body so she could control or kill her, she has to pause and dissolve into helpless laughter because _damn_ , how is this her life now?

 

The Huntsman waits patiently for the hysteria to fade and Emma to stop gasping out giggles. “I’m sorry,” she finally manages. “It’s just- this is all very new to me.”

 

“Give it a few more days,” the Huntsman says wryly, and he leads the way through a curved doorway to the doctor’s…

 

 _Lab_ , she wants to say, because this isn’t sterile and white like the hospitals at home, nor is it the primitive setup she’d expected to find in a castle. No, there are those psychedelic magical boxes of electricity all over the place and metallic instruments that have no place in fairyland are lying beside metal beds, and when the Huntsman calls out, “Frankenstein!” she thinks it must be a joke before it occurs to her that it’s one the Huntsman would never know.

 

 _She crosses worlds and finds new men to do her bidding_. Stories are fairytales in their own twisted ways, after all, and somehow Regina has managed to get her way in other worlds, too. She shudders, remembering old horror movies and people taken apart and patched together into horrible amalgamations, and when the doctor appears in the room, his hands gloved and a neat little knife in one hand, Emma panics.

 

Rarely has she entertained the thought of fleeing from the queen back into the forest and she doesn’t think of it now, either. It’s all instinctive, racing from the room, pulling away from the Huntsman as he reaches for her and running away from them at top speed as he calls, “Emma!” after her. She isn’t thinking of escaping the castle, just answering to her last survival instincts as they warn her _away, away_ from the doctor who calls himself Dr. Frankenstein and wants to inspect her heart. It’s old training from years of learning to defend herself the hard way that has her shove the guard at the entrance when he brandishes a spear, kicking him backward with enough force that he slams into the door he’d tried to block from her.

 

She’s running across the grounds, past a little pond and a clearing where a distant figure is riding a horse, into the woods that she’d come from without regard for whatever paths might be there. The underbrush is hitting her with every fifth step, pulling at her clothes, and it takes a particularly nasty branch that grips her tunic in place before she’s finally forced to stop.

 

 _Oh, crap_ is her first thought, Regina’s displeasure at her escape her second. If she’d thought Emma was hiding something before, she’d be sure of it now, and when she goes back-

                                                                                                                                                                                     

 _If_ she goes back, Emma amends, eyeing the woods around her speculatively. She won’t do much good to Henry as a stone statue or as Regina’s slave, and with the luxury of distance, she’s beginning to think that this hasn’t been her best decision. She barely knows the kid and she’s already endured more indignities on his behalf than she’d have ever done to be around a kid she _does_ know. She’d given birth to him, but that bond is a chain here, promising a life as an evil queen’s punching bag (and wow, that idea should not send a thrill through her, _really_ ) and nothing else.

 

She might not have much to live for, but it’s always been in her plans to _live_ , period, and that seems unlikely here.

 

Gritting her teeth, she yanks herself free of the branch and squints around the woods, making her way toward the biggest gap between trees that faces away from the castle.

 

\--

 

It had only taken a half hour to get into the town with Henry, but now it’s been four hours of nothing but trees and Emma is ready to admit that she might be lost. She sits on a felled branch in a little clearing, her legs aching and hunger gnawing at her.

 

She’d last eaten yesterday in the early evening, trailing after the Huntsman as he’d led her into the back door of the kitchens and made himself at home at the table while a serving girl flirted shamelessly with him and made snide comments about Emma shoveling her food in with about as much grace as the Huntsman had been, too. This morning they’d gone straight to the doctor without breakfast and Emma’s feeling it now after hiking through these woods- and how big is this little town in the middle of nowhere, anyway? Or is she going in circles?

 

“Well, it’s far bigger than it seems,” a voice says from just above her left ear, and she jumps, spinning around to hit whoever’s behind her. She punches air, and there’s a high-pitched, manic giggle from somewhere behind her.

 

She turns again. A man stands in the center of the clearing, his skin aged and wrinkled and his hair matted into a stringy halo around his face. He’s grinning, an arm of his gaudy outfit extended in greeting. “Emma Swan,” he chirps.

 

She’s beyond being impressed at people knowing her name here, and instead smiles without humor, folding her arms in front of her. “Let me guess. You must be…Rumpelstiltskin.”

 

“The queen has mentioned me!” He cackles again, wild and amused.

 

Emma raises an eyebrow. “Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I don’t think she’s a fan.”

 

Rumpelstiltskin clasps a hand to his heart. “I’m wounded, truly.” He shakes his head, mournful. “And after all I’ve done for her.”

 

“What have you done for her?” Emma asks, curious.

 

Rumpelstiltskin smiles enigmatically, turning away. “If you are searching for a way out of these woods, I can show you.” She opens her mouth, but he’s already extending his hands, flicking them outward. “Follow me, dearie!” he trills, and then he’s vanishing again, reappearing a few feet away beyond the clearing.

 

“The queen won’t like this!” she feels honor-bound to call after him. She’s already regretful at the thought of the Huntsman and how terrible his punishment must be for letting her go, and she has no desire to force Regina’s wrath onto anyone else.

                                                                                                                                                                     

Rumpelstiltskin is suddenly behind her again, whispering into her ear. “I have done many deeds the queen wouldn’t like, dearie. And we’re all tired of catering to Her Majesty’s whims in this cursed forest.” His fingers climb up her arm as swiftly as Regina’s had climbed down her front earlier that day, but the chill she feels now has nothing to do with latent attraction. “You may be just what we’re looking for.”

 

“We,” she echoes. “We who?”

                                                                                                                                                    

But Rumpelstiltskin is gone again, waiting for her at a spot ten feet ahead, and when he taps his lips in warning she doesn’t dare ask for more details.

 

It’s another few minutes of following him through the woods before she finally ventures a response. “Look, I don’t think I’d be very helpful to anyone, and I’ve kind of got to focus on keeping myself alive first.” She swallows guiltily. “I need to,” she says, not sure who she’s convincing. “Besides, I’m not coming back.”

 

Rumpelstiltskin’s forehead creases under the wrinkles. “But dear little Henry, all alone in the grasp of an evil queen!” He gasps, and she can’t tell if it’s mocking or just exaggerated. “Dreaming of a white knight to come save him,” he whispers in her ear.

 

She flinches. “He has people here who can help him just as much as I can.” She thinks of Snow, who has free reign of the castle and hugs Henry like she cares. “I’m no good to him killed by his mother.”

 

“She won’t kill you,” Rumpelstiltskin calls from somewhere to her right. She follows his voice to another area where the trees have been cleared away, this one long and winding with a dusty road leading forward and the sound of horses galloping behind them. The path she’d come in on.

 

“She _can’t_ ,” he says, leaning forward, and then he reappears behind her on the path, his hands flung out in warning as a carriage comes to view, the Huntsman seated in the driver’s seat and holding the reins.

 

“This is unfortunate,” her guide says, sounding unbothered.

 

Her eyes narrow, suspicious. “I’ll say.” She folds her arms again, wondering if she has time to run back into the woods. But the Huntsman is already jumping down, jogging toward her with only a glare to spare for Rumpelstiltskin, and she doubts she can take him by surprise again. The imp hums to himself, winking at Emma as he steps to the side.

 

“Are you mad?” the Huntsman demands, bending down to bind her legs together. “That was the worst escape attempt I’ve ever seen,” he mutters under his breath. She kicks him once before she’s frozen in place, Regina extending a lazy finger as she dismounts from the carriage.

 

“I wasn’t going to stand around and get cut open by a mad scientist!” she says hotly, straining against the magic holding her still.

 

It lets her go in the next minute, and she nearly falls over before the Huntsman steadies her.

 

Regina strides over to them and seizes Emma by the chin, fingers pressing painfully against her teeth. “Did you think you could flee from me?” she demands, her words hot and furious against Emma’s face. “You are _mine_. Not his pawn to play with!”

 

When Rumpelstiltskin speaks, it’s with cloying obeisance that makes Regina’s lips press together until they turn white. “I was only lending a hand to a damsel in distress, Your Majesty.” He bows, all sweeping grandeur and mocking eyes. “I had no idea that she was a runaway of yours.”

 

Regina draws herself together, letting go of Emma to stalk over to Rumpelstiltskin. “I will find out what you’re up to, Rumpel. And when I tire of you, I will destroy you.” It’s all bluster and even Emma can tell, knowing what little she does of Regina’s mistrust and wariness when it comes to Rumpelstiltskin.

 

He rocks back and forth for a moment, clasping his hands together. “Always so delightful, Your Majesty.” He vanishes, reappearing at the edge of the woods. “Oh, and Your Majesty?” He bows again, his eyes on Emma’s again. “I would ever despair if any harm came to the fair Emma Swan. I’ve grown so …fond of her in our time together.”

 

Regina’s lip curls in disgust. “I’ll let you know when anything you say matters to me.” She yanks Emma to her by the arm, and Emma is pulled forward, her legs tangling in the Huntsman’s bonds around them and slipping out from under her.

 

Before she can fall, Rumpelstiltskin is there, catching her in his arms as though mid-waltz. He presses a cautioning finger to her lips in reminder and her skin crawls, and then Regina is there again and Rumpelstiltskin is gone, far beyond the woods that surround them.

 

“That bastard,” Regina mutters, her fury dissipated and replaced with something dark and almost fearful. And he might have saved her in the woods and hinted at rebellion, but Regina’s dread is enough to put Emma on edge when it comes to Rumpelstiltskin.

 

Regina grips her harder than is probably necessary, but she’s also careful of her bonds on the way to the carriage and patient when Emma stumbles. She doesn’t say anything until they’re halfway to where the horses are waiting, and Emma’s focusing on the rope around her ankles when she hears her irritated voice. “I told you to wait inside the carriage.”

 

“I waited until Rumpelstiltskin was gone!” Henry protests, and Emma’s head snaps up to see the boy running across the road, grinning. “Emma!” he says, throwing his arms around her waist, and Emma musses his hair and stares down at his glowing face, wondering how she could have planned to leave this boy to his mother.

 

When she looks up, Regina’s eyes are very soft as she regards her son’s smile and there’s no evil queen for a moment, just a woman who loves her son. “I was so scared,” Henry says, looking up at them both. “Did he hurt you?”

 

“No,” Emma’s quick to assure him. “He really was just…helping me find the path back to the castle,” she lies. “I got kind of freaked out by Dr. Frankenstein and got lost.”

 

Regina looks at her oddly. “What was his price?”

 

“Price?”

 

“For leading you through the woods.”

 

“Oh.” Emma shrugs. “He just offered.”

 

Regina’s hand tightens on her arm, and even Henry lets go of her, looking troubled through his smile. “Did he?”

 

“Rumpelstiltskin always asks for something in return,” Henry says. “Are you sure he didn’t trick you into saying something? Or giving him something?”

 

“Pretty sure.” Emma considers. “Aside from the fact that no one’s ever taught him about personal space, he seemed pretty okay.”

 

Henry opens his mouth to respond, but Regina cuts him off. “Henry, back into the carriage. Miss Swan and I will be there in a minute.”

 

“But Mother!” There’s a full-scale whine coming but Regina holds up a warning finger before Henry can say anything else. He stops, sighing the heavy sigh of a child exasperated with his mother, but he does run to the carriage and sit on the step, waiting for them.

 

“So you are Rumpelstiltskin’s lackey,” Regina says, staring at her. “I can’t say I’m surprised, though he’s done a terrible job with you. You can’t even escape my castle successfully without getting lost.”

 

Why is it so often in conversations with Regina that she feels the need to choose between correcting a falsehood or retorting against a slight? “I’m either the most unconvincing spy he’s ever had, or I just happened to be at the right place at the right time,” Emma points out. “Come on, which one is more believable?”

 

Regina shakes her head. “Or he has a plan for you and you just don’t know it yet.” She pauses, eyeing Emma appraisingly. “It would explain the heart. I should throw you in the dungeons where you belong.”

 

But she doesn’t, and that’s the part of the day that has Emma struggling most. She endures a carriage ride with the queen’s hand splayed possessively over her thigh and Henry bubbling with a thousand things to tell her in the past two days ( _“I rode that horse yesterday! See? That one over by the stable! And Snow taught me about royal dinners because I get to go to my first one soon now that I’m ten and I saw a picture page about tigers on the Internet and Mother says that I can learn archery if I don’t talk about seeing you anymore-“_ and then he stops and looks at his mother, shamefaced, but Regina is staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts) and when they get back, Henry hugs her and then his mother, who stares at him as though he’s a ghost, and he babbles about getting her something to eat and runs off with a smiling Snow.

 

For those few minutes, Emma can almost lose herself in this castle that’s full of smiles and love and a cheerful little boy, can see herself enjoying her stay here and can imagine an upbringing for Henry that hadn’t been all people turned to stone and doctors fond of body parts. Then she’s being escorted to her room by the Huntsman and Regina is breaking out of her Henry-induced stupor to inform her that whatever food Henry picks out will be brought to her room instead, where she can spend the rest of the evening. And she’s left in her dismal room an hour later, picking through the feast that a serving girl brings her and laughing a little at the overabundance of candy in Henry’s selection when the door opens and Regina returns.

 

“You will come to breakfast tomorrow,” she informs her. “Henry and I dine an hour after dawn, and we expect to see you there.”

 

“Well, that’s an upgrade,” Emma says, bemused at this turn of events.

 

Regina pauses. “Yes, well…it would please Henry.” She leans forward. “Do not think that this is me, cowed by the wishes of a ten-year-old.”

 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Emma says agreeably.

 

Regina smiles, lips thin and eyes unpleasant. “He doesn’t know you, Miss Swan. You’re just an idea to him now. And the more he sees of you, the less he will respect a nobody lawbreaker from a land without magic with nothing to show for her years without him but a troubled past and a prison sentence.” She inclines her head. “Who am I to disabuse him of his fanciful notions when you can do it so efficiently on your own?”

 

Emma’s eyes narrow, the burn stinging and the challenge accepted. “So I’m not some ideal mom that he was looking for. I can’t exactly give you points for that one, either. And what will you do to me if he decides that I’m pretty cool? Kill me to teach him-?” She stops, realizing that it may not be the best plan to give an evil queen ideas in that regard.

 

Regina waves a hand dismissively. “Body temperature has nothing to do with this. Though I will have some more…appropriate clothing sent to you.” She frowns at Emma’s tunic and pants. “You gave birth to a prince and I will have you dress like it.”

 

“I could always just show up in my underwear,” Emma mumbles, watching the queen turn away.

 

Regina stops in place, a cold smile spreading across her face. “It would be a step up from _that_ ,” she acknowledges. “Sleep well, Miss Swan.” She glides from the room, her dress moving against her body with every step, and Emma can’t stop staring at the sway of her hips under glossy material as the door closes behind her.

 

A servant delivers her clothing half an hour later, and she waits until he’s gone before she looks through it and finds the corset.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbetaed this time because I'm impatient~

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

She can’t stop staring down.

 

One time, when she’d been ten- eleven, maybe?- she’d been in a school with a mandatory production that her whole class had been required to join, regardless of whether or not they were foster children with parents who weren’t interested in buying them the fancy dresses that the story demanded. She’d stood there in a little blue paisley dress, feeling more like Laura Ingalls than Cinderella, and watched the other girls in the class compare gowns and spin until the material floated around them, real fairytale princesses.

 

She’d long since been on her own and discovered the joys of the little black dress or a pair of blue jeans, but there’s still a certain magic to princess gowns that she can’t resist, even as she feels naked and unprotected by the restrictive layers of fabric that clings to her legs and the corset that a servant had fastened so tightly she can barely breathe. Still, she feels regal in her getup, graceful and-

 

“Would you stop tripping into me?” the Huntsman complains as her shoe traps the front of the gown and she topples forward again.

 

Well, it isn’t like it’s _magical_. She leans on his arm, straightening herself out. “Come on, I’m sure you get women falling into your arms all the time,” she says teasingly, grinning at the way he blinks down at her corset and then looks away just as swiftly.

 

He rolls his eyes, pausing by the door to the dining hall. “Don’t let the queen hear that or she’ll execute every maid in the castle.”

 

“Really now, my Huntsman.” Regina’s voice is smooth and polished with all the assurances of power as she calls out to them from inside the room. “I am entirely confident of your devotion to me.”

 

Emma pulls the door open, and Regina crooks a finger from her seat at the table. The Huntsman walks to her and Emma stands in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, as he bends to kiss his queen.

 

 She can’t help but notice how Regina kisses, the way her lips close over his with arrogant possession, the way her cheeks hollow out over fine cheekbones and her hand presses against the nape of the Huntsman’s neck to deepen the embrace. And then it’s over in a moment, the Huntsman retreating past Emma and Regina’s eyes on Emma’s, her lips curved in a smile that holds no humor.

 

Henry is staring at his plate, and Emma gets the distinct impression that this performance was all for her, a quiet reminder from the woman who holds her guard captive.

 

“Good morning,” she ventures, tripping only a little as she makes her way to her seat. The table looks like the kind you’d see in a boardroom, long and sparse in a way that defies dust or any imperfections. Henry is seated beside his mother, who is naturally at the head of the table. A third plate is set at the opposite head, distant from mother and son.

 

 _So that’s how this is going to be._ Regina is definitely smirking when she nearly falls into her seat, the dress catching the side of her chair as she does. Henry remains oblivious. “Emma! I didn’t know you were coming to breakfast!” He beams, sliding his plate down to the middle of the table.

 

“Henry!” Regina snaps, but the kid is already sitting back down halfway to Emma, chattering about his morning plans, and Emma raises her eyes to catch Regina’s, unable to resist a smirk of her own.

 

This isn’t a competition- and it isn’t one that she can win, nor does she know what she’d do if she did win it. But she can’t deny the warmth that comes with Henry’s smiles, or the rush of victory at the way Regina’s lips thin around the fork in her mouth. _Do you really love him, or is he just another prize to be kept?_ She’d been so sure yesterday, when Regina had held her son in her arms as though he meant the world to her, but her visit later that night had left Emma suspicious again of the evil queen’s motives.

 

What kind of mother wants him to be hurt, the way Emma’s certain he will once she disappoints him?

 

And Emma knows that she _will_ disappoint him, knows that with all the certitude of the girl who’d grown up consistently disappointed in all the adults around her until she’d lost all faith in others. She doesn’t trust people with the same earnestness that a little boy in medieval clothing can trust a mother he’s never met, and she aches with the knowledge that Regina intends that she be the one to crush Henry for good.

 

The woman sitting across the table from her, her eyes running over Emma’s body now like she owns it- she’s _evil_ , and the veneer of magic that lends a fantastical air to everything that she does can’t mitigate that anymore. This is the woman who had entombed Snow’s prince and a dozen tourists, who still holds the Huntsman prisoner, who reigns over a kingdom that Emma has barely had chance to see but knows better than to believe it’s with compassion and goodness. Regina might care about Henry, but she isn’t above putting her own needs first, and Emma is suddenly determined that Henry will never suffer from her again.

 

“-And I’m going horseback riding again today and Snow said I could ask you to come too!” Henry is saying.

 

And it’s partially concern for him and partially because of the stricken look on Regina’s face that Emma says immediately, “Of course I will,” before Regina can object.

                                                                               

And she knows instinctively that Regina, for all her bluster and machinations, won’t refuse Henry while he’s smiling with such open enthusiasm.

 

\--

 

The stables are to the right of the castle, well kept with plenty of space for running. Henry races ahead as they descend to the fields, shouting back to her about the horse she’ll be riding, and Emma pulls her dress a little higher and shudders at the thought of riding for the first time like this.

 

“Don’t worry, you can always tell him you don’t want to,” Snow says by way of greeting outside the stables. She’s smiling, welcoming and kind, but Emma can see the worry on even her face when she trips over the hem of her gown and falls against the outer wall of the stable. “Ladies are meant to be skilled at riding but never display it in public.”

 

Emma arches an eyebrow. “If the dress didn’t tip you off yet, I’m not much of a lady.”

 

“No,” Snow agrees, her lips pursing a bit with every passing moment. “Where’s the clothing I sent you?”

 

“Regina,” Emma announces, pulling herself up again. Henry is calling out into the stable, and a man emerges, lurching from side to side as unsteadily as Emma as he leads a horse with him. “ _Requested_ that I not change out of this outfit around Henry.”

 

_“I will not have my son escorted by a woman with no propriety,” Regina had snapped when Henry suggested otherwise, eyes flashing. It had been the only thing she’d said during the meal after Henry had invited Emma along, and they’d both obeyed without question._

 

Now, Snow sighs. “Of course she did.”

 

“But if he’s riding with that guy, I should be on equal footing, right?” Emma gestures to the man, who’s passed the reins to Henry already and is stumbling back into the stables with lumbering, confused steps.

 

“Daniel doesn’t ride.” Henry walks over to them, a docile pony following.  “He just takes care of the horses.”

 

“Is he okay? He looks kind of…” She considers. “Kind of like me, but without the dress,” she admits, shamefaced.

 

Henry shrugs. “I don’t know. He’s always been like that. He likes the stables and the horses so I guess Mother just lets him stay out here. I’ve never really thought about it.”

 

They both look to Snow for explanation, but she’s uncharacteristically silent, her eyes dark and uncertain. “It isn’t my place to say,” she says tightly.

 

“Snow-“

 

“ _It isn’t my place_!” The words burst from the woman as if they’re an oath, a dirty phrase she keeps constrained to her mind for fear of what might happen with exposure. Emma stares, taken aback by the vehemence, and Snow stares determinedly at the ground.

 

“Mother.” Henry says it with certainty, stepping forward to touch a hand to Snow’s arm. “What did she do to you? To _him_?”

 

When Snow raises her face to his again, it’s a different face than Emma’s ever seen, tired and pained and so very _old_. “She did nothing,” she says, and Emma doesn’t believe it for an instant.

 

But Snow doesn’t want to expand on it, not even when the Huntsman arrives from a far field and has Daniel bring them each a horse. Daniel stumbles again as he passes the reins to Emma, something not quite right about his face, and Emma shudders.

 

The Huntsman saddles her horse for her, smirking at her face. “Don’t worry, it hasn’t rained in days. The chances of you falling in wet mud are much less than you falling on hard grass and breaking a leg.”

 

“You’re always a pleasure.” She follows Snow’s lead and manages to mount the horse on her second try, her gown riding up to her knees as she does. The Huntsman eyes her legs appreciatively before he swings onto his own horse and rides over to Henry.

 

“What now?” she asks Snow.

 

Snow is staring at her, her lips quivering with repressed emotion that’s nothing like the intensity of her reaction to Daniel. “Is this… is this your first time riding a horse?”

 

“If I ever figure it out.”

 

“I’ll help you.” And Snow’s eyes are shining with tears as she shows Emma how to encourage her steed on and direct it from side to side. Snow’s a born teacher, talking to Emma as though she’s a child without hitting the line between helpfulness and condescension, and Emma finds that she’s eager to show her what she learns as she steers her steed around the field. There’s a sort of rush to riding a horse, even as slowly as she’s going, the sturdiness of the mount like no vehicle she’s ever ridden, and she’s surprised to realize that she’s enjoying herself.

 

“Wow, Emma!” Henry’s pony is moving at a quick trot now and he and the Huntsman are riding around them in a wide circle. “You’re really getting the hang of this!”

 

She turns to respond and tumbles to the ground face-first, landing on her stomach. All the air is punched out of her in an instant, her ribs sore if not broken. “Thanks!” she calls out in a tiny voice.

 

The Huntsman is helping her up, holding back a smile that still leaks through. “I wasn’t giving you advice, you know.”

 

“Oh, shut up.” She scowls at him halfheartedly and climbs on the horse again, her sore muscles protesting the thump as she hits the saddle. She’s stubborn enough not to give up the first time she falls, especially when even Henry is looking so pitying at her fall.

 

For all his bravado, the Huntsman rides beside her for the next few rounds while Snow takes off to follow Henry, and soon Emma’s feeling confident enough to catch up to the others.

 

They’re speaking in low voices as she approaches, the tones of co-conspirators. “-knight always rides a horse!” Henry is saying. “It’s in all the stories!”

 

Snow shakes her head. “We have to do this at her pace. We don’t want to frighten her off.”

 

“It’ll take more than a fall to scare me,” Emma tells them, unable to stop her lips from twitching when Snow startles on her own horse.

 

“Emma! You’re here!” Henry is a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar, eyes wide and cheeks just a bit too red to be innocent. “Uh…how long have you been here?”

 

“Henry!” Snow reproves. She smiles at Emma, quick and sincere. “He cares about you,” she murmurs. “And he knows you’re trying.”

 

Emma smiles back, her eyes moving to Henry again. If Regina’s big plan is to embarrass her in front of Henry, even Emma happily providing her with material doesn’t seem like it’s enough to scare off the kid. He’s grinning at her successes now, excusing her failures, and Emma shivers with the responsibility of his unconditional faith.

 

She isn’t built to be a role model, and she’s certainly not built to be a mother. Regina knows it, Snow seems to know it- but little Henry is still glowing with her every accomplishment, thrilled with every step she takes at becoming someone a prince could respect. _I’ll never meet your standards_ , she wants to warn him, before she lets him down. _I’m never going to be what you need._

 

It’s Snow who distracts her from her doubts, resting a hand on her back in intuitive comfort. “You’re doing great,” she says, and for a moment, staring into the eyes of someone else who inexplicably believes in her, Emma can believe it.

 

\--

 

They break for lunch after another hour and sit in a nearby field while the Huntsman goes out to fetch a serving maid with food. “After we eat, I go to the library for lessons,” Henry tells her. “I guess if the Huntsman isn’t supposed to guard you today, you can come too?” He looks to Snow pleadingly, and when she nods in amused acquiescence he jumps up and pumps his fist, “Yes!” and jogs off to share the news with the Huntsman.

 

“He learned that from the Internet, huh?” Emma suspects that there isn’t much fist-pumping in magic kingdoms, especially for a little boy who doesn’t seem to have any peers his age.

 

“Does he have any friends?” she asks, once Snow is done describing the site she’s found detailing hand gestures for spies (that sounds a lot more like Universal Sign Language, but Emma doesn’t have the heart to clarify).

                                                                                                                                                                                         

“Friends?” Snow blinks. “Well, I think he counts me as a friend, and there are the boys who are designated to serve him.” She frowns. “It’s hard, though. We’re all frozen in time, but Henry’s from the outside, and any friends he finds are outgrown as quickly as he makes them.”

 

“The curse.” Emma hadn’t thought about that. “So he’s going to keep growing until he’s older than Regina herself?”

 

Snow shrugs her shoulders, troubled. “The other boys don’t talk to him much, not after the queen heard one teasing him and dismissed the boy from the palace. And there was that incident with Gretel-“

 

“Like…Bread Crumbs Girl?”

 

“What?”

 

“Never mind.” Emma shakes her head. “What happened to her?”

 

“He found her sneaking into the palace kitchens to steal food, and you know how kindhearted Henry is. He tried to help her.” A little red bird lands on Snow’s finger, warbling, and she strokes it with a finger. “She was a part of the resistance on the outside.”

 

“Resistance?” Emma had heard hinting from Rumpelstiltskin, but nothing concrete, not until now as Snow speaks so frankly about it.

 

Snow raises her hand and the bird flutters off toward the woods in the distance, and if Emma squints she can see someone dressed in red at the edge of the forest receive it. “Not everyone wanted to wait for the Savior.” As they both watch, the red-cloaked figure vanishes back into the woods. “Gretel had been sent to gain the prince’s friendship. When Regina found her…” Her voice trails off as Henry returns, flushed from his run and still beaming at the thought of the rest of the day.

 

“Emma, there’s marshmallows in the kitchen! And Selyse said that you can have as many as we want so I told her you wanted a bowlful and I can have some, right? Right?”

 

Emma pretends to think. “I don’t know, Henry, I’m kind of feeling like I’m going to need a bowl of marshmallows to recover from that ride…but _maybe_ I could part with a few.”

 

His smile could light a city. “You’re the best!”

 

Selyse isn’t nearly as easily fooled as Henry seems to think, and there are two little bowls of marshmallows delivered. Emma watches with a certain level of awe as Henry finishes off the first bowl before falling against her, moaning, “I feel sick, Emma.”

 

“Your mother doesn’t want you eating too many sweets,” Snow points out gently, but she’s smiling at him as he flops to the ground and grabs his canteen. “You don’t want to be sick and give up your day with Emma, do you?”

 

He pops up in an instant, innocent and bright-eyed. “Who’s sick?”

 

Emma pokes him. “Good kid.”

 

The Huntsman doesn’t come back and Emma takes that as tacit acknowledgement that today is hers with Henry as they finish up their food and start tramping back to the castle.

 

She’s happy- really happy around him, more than she’d have ever expected from a kid who’d been raised in an alien world. He’s sweet and loving and maybe a little more spoiled than she had ever been, even with a literal witch as a mother, but all it’s done is made him vulnerable to hurt and sensitive to what his mother is. She craves to protect him from the world, longs to keep his precious smiles so earnest, and knows all the same that it can’t last forever, not when her détente with Regina hangs barely by a thread.

 

 _Or maybe less_. Because there Regina is, standing outside the stables waiting for them, her face drawn and her hands toying with the waist of her dress. Discomfort isn’t an emotion Emma would have ever before associated with the queen who rules her kingdom without ever wavering, but Regina is uncomfortable here, enough that she can’t hide it.

 

“Mother never comes to the stables.” Henry’s face is creased with worry, a counterpoint to Snow, who’s just as pale as Regina right now. “She never even rides on her own. Do you think something happened?”

 

They’re still a good fifty feet from the stables when Regina straightens, a decision apparently made, and turns and vanishes into the enclosed stables.

 

“No!” Henry and Snow are shouting in unison, and Emma starts running, more out of years of self-training than any worry of her own. Henry’s voice follows her as she races forward. “Daniel doesn’t like people to go in the stable! What if he-“

 

She ducks into the room, dark and dusty and stinking of horses and death, and freezes.

 

Daniel had struck her as a little _off_ in the kind of way that Rumpelstiltskin had, something magical warped into him and changing him from human to just-nearly-human. But he’d been gentle with the horses, if a little awkward, and she’d filed him away as odd but not threatening.

 

But Regina is backed against a wall, Daniel’s hands wrapped around her throat, manic murder animating his empty eyes. She’s choking out broken words to him- words Emma realizes a moment later are his name, over and over again- and the queen, master of magic that Emma can’t comprehend, is standing helpless in his grasp.

                                                                                                                                                                              

“Regina!” It’s enough to distract Regina for a moment but not Daniel, whose fingers tighten around Regina’s throat as she chokes out an unintelligible warning to Emma.

 

Emma grits her teeth, seeing no option, and barrels into him, slashing down on his wrists with a decisive blow. Daniel lets go for an instant, howling like an injured animal, and Emma shoves Regina to the side just as he attacks again, throwing her against the wall hard enough that she sees stars.

 

Daniel is at her throat now, choking her in Regina’s place, and she hears Henry as though from a distance crying, “ _Do something, Mother!”_ and Snow shouting, “ _Henry, no!”_ and it’s all a blur of pain and getting hazier as Daniel tightens his grip on her throat. She wants to stop him but all her attacks are reduced to scrabbling at his clothing, her senses dulled by the lack of oxygen getting through to her brain, and she can feel herself sinking to the ground, held up only by Daniel’s iron grip.

 

There’s a burst of gold sparks in the air and Daniel lets her go, blinking confusedly. And a moment later Regina is sandwiched between them, her hands firm against the wall above Emma’s shoulders and her face twisted with helpless rage and grief as she presses it forward, just over Emma’s face.

 

“Can’t you just throw him off with magic?” Emma asks fuzzily, the combination of Daniel’s hands on her neck and Regina so close making it harder and harder to think.

 

Regina’s words are strained now as Daniel beats at her back, one heavy hand landing on Regina and then another, as mindless as a machine. “I won’t…use magic…on him,” she manages. There’s real desperation and helplessness in her voice and Emma wonders why she’s even here, protecting a woman she despises from someone she clearly can’t bear to be around. Regina’s eyes are stormy, her body is shaking, but her hands are strong, keeping Emma from Daniel as he punishes her with blow after blow of what must be superhuman strength from the way Regina shudders.

 

It must have been less time than she’d thought at first but it feels like forever when a spooked horse slams into the side of the stable, distracting Daniel from his attack. The fury in his eyes abates in an instant, replaced by the early emptiness, and he shuffles over to the mare and pats it down until it calms.

 

Emma finds it in herself to stand upright again, tucking an arm under Regina’s arms to support her as they stumble out of the stables together. She doesn’t trip over her dress again until they’re out in the sun and fresh air again, and it’s Regina who catches her before she can fall, arms twisting out to grasp her at her waist and straighten her out.

 

“You saved my life,” she says dumbly. It’s all she can think of to say to Regina, who seems so bereft of the rage and hatred that has defined her until now in that moment.

 

The queen is silent, touching fingers to the already tender bruises on Emma’s neck.

 

It’s only Henry, who speaks before Snow can shush him, who can shake her out of her stupor. “Snow said the horse would help,” he says, his voice very small. “I didn’t know that Daniel would hurt anyone.”

 

The words slice through the silence with painful precision. “Only me, dear.” Regina lets go of Emma, her eyes hardening again, her back straight as though she hasn’t been inflicted with worse than Emma. “Don’t get used to it, Miss Swan. And go see the doctor before those bruises have that damn Rumpelstiltskin start a riot.” She shakes her head. “Or…you won’t see the doctor, will you?”

 

“I can take care of her,” Snow says quickly. “Henry can study alone today.”

 

Henry is suddenly at Emma’s side, an arm tight around her waist. “But I want to help-“

 

“Not another word.” It’s Regina’s tightest voice, compressed and held within, and Henry lets go of Emma at once. “Snow, get her out of my sight. And yourself too,” she adds, but the bite of it is more raw hatred than any of the polished condescension Emma’s heard from her before. Snow looks down, the anguish on her own face nearly as strong as it had been on Regina’s minutes before.

 

She turns, regal and composed, and if the material of her dress wasn’t designed to reveal half her back, they might have never seen the purplish marks against bronzed skin, slashed into her back by Daniel’s blows. Henry gasps and whimpers out his mother’s name but she doesn’t pause, doesn’t look back, and never wavers a step.

 

Only once they’re inside, Snow fussing over her and forcing her down into Snow’s bed so the other woman can help heal her, Emma finally ventures the question again. “Who was Daniel to Regina?”

 

Snow spreads a mixture of ground herbs against Emma’s bruises. “Her fiancé,” she says, and there’s a world of sorrow in Regina’s stepdaughter’s voice as she finally tells the story.


	5. Chapter 5

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

She’s consumed with thoughts of Regina.

 

They follow her when she wakes up in Snow’s bed in the morning, the other woman sleeping soundly beside her; when she sees the fairly decent size of Snow’s room and remembers Snow explaining just how much Regina hates her; when she’s fetched for breakfast again and Regina doesn’t even acknowledge her, even though she’s returned to more comfortable clothing. She watches the woman and strains to understand her, to know how the evil queen and the heroic daughter and the loving mother are all reconciled within her.

 

She craves to see the girl Snow had described more than anything else, to know that she endures even now. For Henry’s sake, for the sake of everyone she’s gotten to know in this castle, for the sake of the kingdom she’s barely seen.

 

And if pressed, she’d probably admit that it’s partially because she thinks she saw that girl yesterday in the desperation and pain in Regina’s eyes as she held off a living zombie to save a woman she’s made no secret of loathing.

 

Snow doesn’t press her, thankfully, even though she’s full of so many questions that it’s interrupting Henry’s lessons. It seems that her escort is a thing of the past- or that Regina just isn’t interested in what she does anymore- and she has full freedom in the castle now, and she explores again, remembering where halls she’d seen only once might be or where the armory is or how to find her way back to her room. She’s quickly bored and back to Snow by afternoon to watch Henry practice with a bow and arrow. Snow is a skilled archer, and Henry’s getting the hang of it quickly.

 

She doesn’t see Regina again until she’s tersely told to stay for dinner, and even when she deliberately drags her place setting over until she’s sitting next to Henry, Regina doesn’t say a word to her, merely asks Henry about his day. Regina had crossed a self-forged line when she’d exposed so much of herself to Emma that day, Emma suspects, and now she’s rebuilding that line with practiced apathy.

 

Days pass, and Regina still says little to Emma. There are no more threats, no more attempts to take Emma’s heart, and Emma finds herself watching Regina with fascination bordering on obsession despite her best efforts.

 

“Really, Miss Swan, you’ve moved from flattery to obeisance,” Regina remarks one day when Henry’s running late and Emma can’t stop glancing toward the head of the table. “I liked you better when you were putting up a fight, not ogling.” She smirks once, the rest of her expression obscured by the flickering candlelight.

 

Emma flushes. “You saved my life,” she points out, going for the simplest truth. “I’m gonna be confused by that, okay?”

 

The queen is all skillful maneuvering and regal masks, keeping the girl who’d taken such joy in riding and loved a stable boy and had a mother who’d snatched it all away from her hidden away from Emma’s searching eyes. “Much as I’m certain you’d like to ascribe that to my good intentions, I assure you that I was only looking out for my son. He doesn’t deserve to watch the woman who gave birth to him strangled to death in a stable, as…gratifying as it might have been for me.”

 

“So you do still want me dead,” Emma presses, satisfied when Regina’s brow furrows and her lips purse. Not that she’s fishing for a reaction. Really.

 

“I want you gone, Emma Swan. As it doesn’t seem that you can feasibly go anywhere, I’ll have to settle for having you…” Her voice trails off for a moment, Regina’s eyes running over her until Emma feels naked to the bone, stripped down from her tunic to nothing but her heart and mind and too-open face. “-silent in my presence,” Regina finishes, almost reluctantly, the final words a caress of what had come previous, silky and meaningless and ever so intimate.

 

Emma aches to speak in rebellion or glare right back or grab Regina to her right then- her hard body softening and pliant in her arms, her lips burning and her chest heaving and promises she’d never meant to make coming to fruition right then- but then Henry bursts in with a wave of happy chatter that drowns them both and they rock together in the undertow, Regina’s eyes still smoldering with unspoken guarantees and Emma’s own gaze blazing in response.

 

It’s the most they’ve said to each other in days and Emma is unsatisfied by what she’s seen. For all her seductive promises of what might come, there’s nothing real there, not like the Regina Emma had seen at the stables or the one Snow speaks of so regretfully. This Regina is distracting and intriguing and Emma can’t deny that wealth of attraction she awakens, but behind the sheen of satin and lace and the curl of her lips, nothing draws Emma in quite like the desperate woman who’d stood between Daniel and Emma and taken a beating for it.

 

She pushes her chair back and rises, and they both turn to look at her. Regina’s expression is cool and Henry’s is inquiring, but Emma shrugs at both of them. “I have to go.”

 

She needs a drink.

 

\--

 

She hadn’t thought that Regina would let her leave the castle again, but the queen doesn’t follow her out and the Huntsman is nowhere to be found as she picks her way along the path, following the road toward the lights in the distance. It’s twilight. The sky is darkening and the warm glow of the town ahead flickers in a way that Boston never had, lit by fire and low-lit lamps instead of the cold science of electricity. Still, though, it’s a place where people live, and she’s never been to a town without a few decent bars.

 

She’ll have to drink this fixation with Regina away. It’s damned unhealthy and dangerous, too, flirting on the edge of a precipice with someone who’s tucked away her empathy so efficiently. The girl Regina may have loved Daniel and the adult Regina undoubtedly loves Henry, but that’s as far as Regina will display human emotion, and she would have no patience for Emma delving further.

 

 _Delving is a bad word_ , she decides, her mind wandering places it shouldn’t in an instant, and she wraps her arms around herself and quickens her pace toward a bar and oblivion.

 

The woods are dark on either side of her, parting more as she nears the town lights, and she hears a howl somewhere close by. For the first time, she wonders what else might be lurking in a fairytale world. Dragons, setting fire to the woods? Werewolves hunting their prey? Vampires, looking for a quick fix and delighted to find a woman all alone in the woods? It’s like something out of a horror movie, and Emma instinctively tenses, reminding herself that she’s more than capable of defending herself.

 

Still, if she’s going to do this again, she’d better have a sword handy from here on out.

 

She walks on, her senses prickling at every crack of a branch or distant howl, and it’s a surprise and a relief when she hears a girl’s voice behind her calling, “Emma? It’s Emma, right?”

 

It should have only been one of the serving girls who’d know her name, but the girl who catches up to her is tall and grinning- without the mark thirty years of endless servitude has left on some of the girls- in her expression. “I’m Red! Snow’s friend,” she clarifies, and Emma recognizes her- or rather, her red cloak.

 

“You’re the one she was passing messages to that day at the stables!” she realizes. Snow talks to birds and they seem to talk back some times, and take little rolled up notes to people on the outside other times. Regina’s restrictions on Snow seem as harsh as the ones on Emma- maybe more so, if it’s been three decades of Snow trapped in the castle without her friends and family.

 

Red bobs her head in acknowledgement. “She said that you were being held prisoner there, too. Are you really Henry’s mother?”

 

“Regina is Henry’s mother,” Emma corrects her. “I’m… just the woman who gave birth to him.” It’s how Regina refers to her, with all the scorn of her son’s circumstances of birth attached, but she feels power in it just as acutely, in the recognition of blood and connection there that can’t be denied.

 

“Wow.” Red seems impressed, all youthful enthusiasm and earnest interest, and Emma can see why kind and motherly Snow would take so well to her. “So…the queen let you go?”

 

“Apparently.”

                                                                                        

“Are you going to run away?”

                                     

Emma stops walking. She hadn’t even thought of it, though it had been foremost on her mind a week before. But now there’s Henry to think of, his trust in her growing every day. And there’s Snow who’s become the friend she’s never wanted or expected. She’s cultivated a taste for being alone, but her heart hurts at the thought of leaving them both to find that same realization while they languish, dreaming of their savior who might never come to set them free.

 

And there’s Regina, whose eyes spark with cool fire and whose lips whisper quiet threats and whose heart has been laid bare before her once and made an addict out of her. She swallows. “No, I don’t think so. Not now.”

                                                                                                             

She’ll have other chances, if she needs to leave. She’ll have to.

 

Red escorts her through the town, pointing out sites that Emma loses track of quickly. “There’s where the farmers live, and that’s Gepetto’s shop, and back there is the fairies’ domain, now that their magic is gone.” There’s a flicker of light in the direction Red’s gesturing toward, dim and suppressed.

 

“Did Regina take it from them, too?” Emma asks, curious. Rumpelstiltskin hadn’t seemed affected by Regina, but perhaps she’d been too afraid of him to enchant him like she had the rest of the town.

 

Red shakes her head. “This world is weaker in magic. I also have more control over my-“ She stops, frowning. “Um. Anyway, they still have a little power, but the fairy dust isn’t as strong anymore, I guess. Here’s the tavern!” She announces, stopping in front of a pathway winding up to a well-lit building. “Granny runs it, but I have a shift tonight.”

 

Inside, the tavern is loud and boisterous, men and the odd woman gathered at tables eating and drinking and shouting good-naturedly across the room at each other. Red is quickly distracted by clamors for more drinks, and she manages to set a pitcher of ale down in front of Emma before she bids her farewell.

 

Emma sips her drink, wincing at the taste. It’s sweeter than the beer she’s used to, but it’ll do. The people around her sound louder and more distant with every sip, and she lets herself tune them out, thinking instead of the little boy she’d left behind with his queen.

 

She’s always been able to hold her liquor but there must be some magical element to this ale, bringing on the first stages of intoxication faster than she’d expected, and she jumps when another pitcher slams down on the table beside her. “I’ve never seen you before,” a little man announces, and then there are a few more crowding behind him, eyeing her through bleary eyes.

 

“I’ve been in the castle,” Emma says neutrally.

 

“Sure don’t look like a serving wench,” someone retorts from behind her. It’s another little man, short and bearded with suspicious eyes. “Fine clothes for a serving wench. You’re one of _hers_ , aren’t you?”

 

“Here to watch us and report to the queen,” another… _dwarf, are these dwarves?_ says. Emma tries to count them, but the ones in front of her keep splitting and reforming. There are either four or eleven, she thinks.

 

Two identical dwarves lift their drinks to their lips in unison. “Haven’t you done enough?” they say together, blurring back into one dwarf to Emma’s dizzy eyes. “Damn queen.”

 

“Damn queen!” all the dwarves chorus, raising their glasses and clinking them together.

 

The suspicious dwarf glares at her again. “Won’t curse the queen, either? How deep are you in her pocket?”

 

“Not deep enough,” Emma mumbles. The dwarves stare, and she raises her glass half-heartedly. “Yeah, yeah, damn Regina.”

 

The dwarf’s lip curls. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those _savior lovers_.” He sneers, slamming his glass on the table with enough force that it shatters, startling the rest of the tavern to silence. A thin train of blood runs down his fist. “She’s not coming! She’s never coming!”

 

There’s a low murmur at that, dark and angry. “Shut your mouth,” Red snaps from behind the bar. “The savior will come.”

 

“The twenty-eighth year has started already!” someone else shoots back from the other corner of the room. “Where’s the savior now?”

 

“Yeah!” There’s a chorus of agreement, and Red stares down at the pitcher she’s filling, her eyes hard and defiant.

 

“Have faith,” an older man calls out, and the dwarf beside Emma snorts loudly.

 

“Faith?” he echoes. “Faith in a myth? The savior is dead. And it’s time we fought back, before that damned queen and her bastard son destroy even what we have here.”

 

“Hey.” Emma thinks to say, as the crowd rumbles and more agreement is shouted out. Regina, the royal witch, their threats growing more and more creative. Snow White, a patsy, who’s been too caught up in the new prince’s life to care about her people. The fury at the castle is low and at boiling point, tension amped up with the help of ale and Red watching helplessly as the people around her seethe with barely contained violence.

 

“Royals, caught up in their own little spats and destroying us in the process,” another dwarf grumbles.

 

“Like hell!” It’s the suspicious dwarf, suddenly switching sides in the clamor to growl at his friend. “Snow is still on our side. It’s that little bastard that the queen has forced her to mother that keeps her prisoner.” His words are slurred, pain and alcohol slowing his speech. “If I got my hands on that little brat, I’d-“ Out of words, he pantomimes, his hands tightening and squeezing an imaginary neck. “-before he grows up to be a tyrant like his mother.”

 

Emma sees through dazed eyes, her pitcher gone and her mind clouded. Her heart is pounding in her ears as she watches someone punch the dwarf in the chest, throwing him onto the next table, and it’s only after a moment that she realizes that it’s her fist in front of her, her own hands clenched at the dwarf’s words.

                                                           

Someone else howls in fury and there’s another dwarf on her, and now she remembers to throw him back too even as the men at the next table crash into theirs to retaliate. There are shouts of frustration and violence and others join in, backing the dwarves or their neighbors, attacking anyone close enough to touch.

 

Nearly thirty years of fury and helplessness are powering this fight, and to Emma’s still-intoxicated mind, it’s all flashes of metal and grunts and purple bruises. She takes a moment to realize that she’s being attacked, too, and throws herself into the brawl with all the enthusiasm that inebriation can bring.

 

“Enough!” Red is shouting, but she’s drowned out by a tavern packed with brawlers, breaking glasses and trampling each other in an attempt to destroy _something_ , _anything_ , and Emma is only thinking of Henry and the way the dwarf had so gleefully promised to snuff out his little life. She kicks and throws herself forward, desperate to defend a son who’d never know what they speak of, outside the castle.

 

A thunderous bang splits the air, and Emma freezes, recognizing the sound for what it is. Beside Red, an older woman stands bearing a gun, aiming for the ceiling. She fires again, startling the occupants of the tavern for another moment, but it proves ineffective against the mob.

 

A third bang sounds, but this one’s considerably louder, a deafening blow that seems unending, drowning out all the noise in the tavern until even the most fierce fight- between another dwarf and a man with a cloak who looks suspiciously like Dr. Frankenstein under his hood- comes to a standstill. The noise continues, roaring over them all, and slowly, all the brawlers turn to stare at the door.

 

Framed in the doorway is Regina, her eyes flashing and her magic-soaked hands outstretched, bringing the magic silencing boom to a crescendo before she lets it end. The room is still silent, the dwarves still gaping beside Emma, and Regina’s eyes flicker to them for a moment before settling on Emma.

 

“Miss Swan, I’d like a word,” The words are casual, unbothered by the destruction wreaked on the tavern or the drunken fight that had induced it, and Emma swallows and steps forward.

 

There’s a low _traitor!_ from one man as she walks by and a _shut up!_ a moment later, and Emma glances to see who’d hissed the response and is startled to see that it’s the dwarf who’d threatened Henry in the first place. He’s glancing from Regina back to Emma, looking troubled.

 

Emma isn’t sure how she looks to them- spy or servant or helpless possession- as she follows Regina out without a word, but it’s hard to care all too much, still addled by drink and righteous anger that leaves her unfocused on anything but the regal figure in front of her. She stumbles a bit and is vaguely startled by Regina’s arm, straightening her against the queen’s side.

 

“I’m so wasted,” she mumbles, half in apology, half explanation. “What the hell does Red put in those drinks?”

                                                                                                                                          

“It’s their only use for fairy dust these days,” Regina sneers, tightening her grip on Emma’s waist. “Really, Emma, a bar fight? Is that the sort of example you want to be setting for Henry?”

 

“They…” The queen must be using her magic to quicken their path, because when Emma blinks they’re only a hundred feet from where the castle grounds begin. Or maybe she’d lost track of time, pressed up against Regina like this. “They said…things…about Henry.”

 

Regina stops moving. Emma topples forward, barely noticing when she crashes to the ground. “He’d love them if they let him, wouldn’t he? And they’d love him. Not…”

 

“Yes,” Regina agrees, her voice soft. “Yes, they would.”

 

 _There you are._ Emma stumbles back to her feet, staring at the eyes of the mournful mother with unabashed interest, subtlety gone with sobriety. This is the Regina she’s been looking for, the woman under the queen, and she tips her face forward, wanting to touch her ever closer.

 

Instead, her head misses its mark and falls forward to drop onto Regina’s shoulder. The other woman doesn’t move and Emma whispers into her neck, “I found you.”

 

“Who were you looking for?” Regina’s tone is strained, her hands settled at Emma’s waist again, and Emma sways unconsciously, dancing in time to her heartbeat with the queen as her immobile center.

 

She remembers to answer only when Regina asks again, the other woman urgent and confused and angry all at once. The magic of the fairy dust wears off as quickly as its onset had come, and she can feel sobriety dawning as they stand together, Regina as dazed by her as she is by Regina.

 

And maybe her one-word answer is unsatisfactory to sum up the thoughts of the moment, but it feels like it might be enough when “ _Regina”_ is all she can respond to the demand.

 

Her cheeks are aflame, her heart pounding a warning, her mind disorganized and humiliated at the sincerity of her admission, and she pulls away from Regina, running back toward the castle and mentally slapping herself for exposing so much of what she’s been craving.

 

She turns back once, long enough to catch sight of Regina still frozen in place, her eyes narrowed with an emotion Emma can’t place and a hand still outstretched ever so slightly where her grip had been settled at Emma’s waist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's been so long! I've been busy with offline things for the past month, but hopefully I'm back on track after this chapter and will keep marching forward! Thanks as always to my stalwart beta [Liz](http://misswan.tumblr.com/) and to all of you here who've read and left kudos and commented! <3


	6. Chapter 6

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

She dreams of horses without riders that night, running wild around Regina in a dervish of motion, blocking her from view and protecting and attacking her with every leap forward. She struggles to get through, to reach the queen, but the horses throw her back each time. When she finally makes it to the center, she touches her hand to Regina’s outstretched fist for an instant before Regina hurls her back, far past the horses and into painful, painful wakefulness.

 

Fairy dust might wreak unexpected havoc with her sobriety but it still packs a hell of a punch in the morning, and Emma leans back in her bed, applying pressure to her temples and groaning. She hasn’t felt this terrible in months, since the last time she’d surrendered to loneliness and oblivion one Boston night, and the hangover hurts nearly as much as it did when she’d been all alone.

 

An unfamiliar smell hits her as she opens her eyes, and she has just enough time to scramble across the room to the impossibly anachronistic bathroom (but this is a fairytale kingdom, and she knows better than to question the impossibilities involved) and gag into the toilet. She cups water into her palms and drinks, quelling her raging stomach, and staggers back to the tray by her bed that had set her off.

 

There’s bread and cheese and an odd-looking fish on a plate, a folded note tucked under the glass of water beside it. She downs the cup immediately and groans again at the headache when she swallows. _No more drinking here_ , she swears, as though the rest of the night hadn’t been warning enough.

 

She’d made a fool of herself in front of Regina and possibly tried to… _attack her_ , her mind supplies, remembering her head dropping instead to rest on the queen’s shoulder, and she shivers at the memory of closeness and a spicy scent, heavy and tempting against the smooth curve of her neck. This breakfast must be a warning, the note her punishment, and she opens it as she nibbles on the bread and squints at the words scrawled upon it.

 

_Bottom level, third corridor. Eight knocks. To destroy her._

 

 _To destroy her._ The words are enough to start her head pounding again. There’s only one _her_ that she’d be beckoned to destroy, though the word choice is curious and discomfiting in its harshness.

 

Her mind wanders, remembering the sprawling bottom floor of the castle and the locked area she’d hit during her explorations. This certainly isn’t a message from Regina at all, but one smuggled in by another source, an invitation she tucks away under her pillow for now. The only message here from the queen is breakfast away from her and Henry.

 

And in that instant of understanding she feels trapped inside the room; the walls claustrophobic, closing in around her, the closed door beckoning, and she starts hammering at it the moment it doesn’t open. “Dammit, Regina, let me out!” she shouts, sending new waves of pain to her still delicate head. She’s been free in the castle since that first day, even with an escort, and she can’t bear the thought of even this elaborate prison narrowed down to only a single room. _Not again, not like it was back then. Not again._ “Regina!” she shouts again.

 

The door opens. “Would you keep it down?” the Huntsman pokes his head in, annoyed. “If you think Her Majesty can hear you up here, you’re even more of a fool than I’d thought.”

 

“Oh. You.” The Huntsman is her guard once more, it seems. Well, it could be worse than just an escort.

 

He enters the room at her unenthusiastic acknowledgment, leaning comfortably against the wall next to the door. “The queen has had you confined to quarters after last night. Don’t get excited, I can’t take you anywhere.”

 

Ah. So it is worse. “She was mad, huh.” Emma hadn’t seen her after she’d left her near the castle grounds, just hurried up to her room with the flush of embarrassment and ale still hot on her cheeks and collapsed into bed.

 

“Livid.” The Huntsman shakes his head. “You’re really terrible at escaping, aren’t you? You make it into town and decide to stay around, and then stagger back to the castle. Do you even want to leave?”

 

“I wasn’t _trying_ to leave!” she protests. “Henry’s still here, and I’m not going to…” She stops. What can she do here? She can’t steal Henry away in the night, safely whisking him off to the real world. Magic and the evil queen that dominates this kingdom aside, she’s no mother. And she wonders if Henry would even adjust to the world outside fairy tales, even to be free of a mother he does seem to care for.

 

When she looks up, the Huntsman is eyeing her dubiously. “You’re sacrificing yourself for the boy. How much longer do you think Regina will keep you alive?” But he softens, just a bit, and there’s compassion in his gaze. “You do have a good heart,” he murmurs.

 

She thinks of Snow White and just how potent a good heart can be to this Huntsman-turned-hostage, and decides it best to change the tide of the conversation. “Regina actually came to the tavern to get me. So I don’t think I’d have made it far anyway, huh?”

 

“Ha!” It’s a full-fledged laugh of surprise from him, an outburst that brightens his face. “Did she? She seemed just as startled as the rest of us when she emerged from her rooms and heard that you’d returned.” His eyes gleam with bitter amusement. “She does get protective over her toys.”

 

“Not her toy,” Emma tosses back, turning to glance out the window. In the distance, she can see Daniel walking with a horse, his gait unsteady in the lumpy dirt.

 

“I’ve seen how she treats you.” The Huntsman counters with a shot of his own, flying straight into his intended target. “She may not have your heart, but you’re her toy all the same. And one that she’s punishing now.” He turns to leave, pausing in front of the open door. “You’re better off without any of this.” His voice is gentle again for the moment, and under his brusqueness Emma hears the plea from someone who understands all too well.

 

She scowls morosely at his back, wondering how much longer she’ll be able to take this. He’s wrong. She isn’t a toy, to be brought out and delighted over. She’s a possession, a prisoner, something Regina will keep until it no longer suits her and Emma is discarded as easily as a lesson for Henry might cost. Emma has been too complacent until now, too readily accepting of both their fates and now, she’s forgotten the threat Regina still poses.

 

She hurts to think of Henry losing anything, to see his earnest affection gone and him hardened as his adoptive mother had once been years before. There’s too much of the mother Snow had described in Regina, too much of a need for power and control for her child’s own good. And if Regina deems Emma Henry’s Daniel, a sacrifice to age him into a hardened monarch, they’ll all be lost.

 

When she stares out the window again, Daniel is gone and the other subjects of her thoughts are walking together in the gardens that surround the castle, Regina gesticulating and Henry absorbed in his thoughts. He looks at her with barely contained resentment, a child scorning his mother for a thousand evils known, and Emma can almost forget her own resentment and wariness at the way Regina reaches to embrace her son and he pulls away, snapping something angrily at her.

 

It might be self-absorbed to assume that this is about Emma, but her suspicions are confirmed in a moment when Regina raises her gaze unconsciously toward her window and Henry follows, the latter’s face lighting up and the former darkening even more. She waves, sheepish, and manages a smile for Henry. He lifts a hand to her, less in greeting than longing. _Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair._

 

And it’s Regina that Emma’s watching, Regina who watches Henry as Henry watches Emma and only Emma sees the bare anguish on her rival’s face as Henry strains for the prodigal parent over the one beside him.

 

\--

 

“Emma!” The voice comes as a surprise but not an unwelcome one, and Emma jerks out of her musings to smile at Snow.

 

She’s been sitting in darkness for most of the day, pushing terrible thoughts from her mind and smoothing over the mysterious note in her hands a thousand times and watching the shadow of the castle move across the fields beyond it. The Huntsman had brought her a meal at midday but hadn’t stayed for long, uncomfortable with her cell just as she is. Not that she can have much sympathy for the one tasked to stand _outside_ her room. “How’d you get past the Huntsman?”

 

Snow winks. “If anyone asks, he left his position to dissolve a skirmish between some servants downstairs.” She sits down beside Emma, lighting the lamp next to her bed. “I think he feels for you.”

 

She can’t resent him, either, the prisoner with a cell around his own heart. “Thank him for me when you go, will you? I thought I’d be bored to tears here all day.”

 

She doesn’t expand on that, or on just how close she’s been to shutting out the world again, like she had once before. But Snow is nothing if not insightful, the gentle spirit who sees much more than Emma had meant to reveal. “You really don’t like being locked in, do you?” There’s an understanding in her voice, and Emma wonders just what Snow had done in the castle before Henry had needed a tutor.

 

She hesitates. “I…I wound up in prison once. On the outside.” There aren’t words to describe what had happened to a seventeen-year-old girl who’d gone from promises of love and freedom to the cold reality of a minimum-security jail cell. And yet words tumble out regardless as Snow sits silently, her face unguarded and her pain for her friend acute upon it.

 

She remembers the days that had dragged by alone, with the bare minimum of human interaction and the knowledge that all she’d lost was a sham of a future. And then she’d discovered that she was pregnant and there had been weeks of hopelessness in which her cell had become a nightmare, an empty cavern where a thousand dreams were all stamped out by her own realism and she’d known that she would never be suited to mother that child. Where the life growing within her had been a prison of its own in that constant reminder of a baby she was going to doom to a childhood like hers.

 

“I’d never even thought of adoption, did you know?” she admits. “I’d been just as willing to give Henry up to the foster system because I knew that even that would be better than me.”

 

“Emma…”

 

“And then the social worker in our prison got a call from someone highly placed on the East Coast interested in my baby, and I’d jumped at the opportunity. I hadn’t realized she’d be an evil queen.” She smiles without mirth.

 

“Rumpelstiltskin engineered the whole thing, actually,” Snow says softly. “He retained his power as part of the curse and I suppose he thought he owed Regina for it. And he does honor his debts.”

 

Her skin crawls at the mention of the imp, the memories of how he’d looked at her back in the woods still unnerving. “Why me?” she wonders, leaning back against the wall. Her shoulder touches Snow’s as it tenses. “Why some random prisoner across the country? That’s pretty far to go from Maine.”

 

Snow shrugs, but her face shutters for the first time, her sympathy replaced with something far more cautious. “Maybe it was easier, or he wanted someone far away so there’d be no risk of you coming to our world.” She inhales, turning away to stare at the wall. “Or maybe he knew you were special.”

 

Emma laughs. “I’m not special.”

 

“You’re…” Snow stops talking and draws in her knees to her chin, closing in on herself as though she’s thought better of it. “You’ve been through so much,” she whispers finally. “And you were so alone.”

 

Emma shifts, uncomfortable at the pity in her friend’s voice. “Not always. I did okay.”

 

“You came out of it so strong!” And now there are tears in her eyes, and they’re making Emma’s own eyes water too at the fierce affection in them. “You’ve endured and you’ve lost so much and you’re here and you’re wonderful.” Snow’s voice breaks on the last word and Emma wraps an arm around her, pulling her close. She comprehends too late why this is a topic that must be just as painful for the other woman.

 

“You had to give up your daughter.”

 

Snow trembles under her. “I was so _selfish_.”

 

“Don’t say that!” Snow had had far better reasons than Emma, far nobler than the self-doubt and fear that had guided Emma every step of the way. Until that child had been in her arms and for a split second she’d wondered- just wondered- if she could raise this fragile creature after all, keep him as her own. She’d been glad after that she’d already signed the papers and couldn’t renege on the deal in that moment when anything had seemed possible.

 

“I was.” Snow shakes her head violently. “I thought only about the curse and the savior, breaking it for us all. I thought about losing the girl I’d wanted so dearly, that I’d never thought I’d be able to have. When it all happened too soon, I never considered the life that baby would lead without parents in an alien world.” She chokes back a sob. “I never thought about _her_!”

 

Emma pats her back awkwardly, struggling for something to say beyond platitudes, something that can make this right. She’s never felt as guilty about giving Henry up as she has these last few weeks, seeing the world he’s become a part of, loving mother- albeit evil queen- or not. Old regrets have swarmed up, old litanies of _if you’d been stronger- better, ready to be a mother- he’d have been happier_ reproving her with his every frown, with each moment that had been less than perfect for her surrendered child. “Hey, hey. Look at me.” Snow turns to stare at her, her eyes red-bruised with tears. “They found me on the side of the road when I was a newborn. And I turned out okay, right?” She forces a rueful smile onto her face. “If you forget all the stuff I just told you about prison and unplanned pregnancy and the foster system. Your daughter’s going to be back someday, I’m sure.”

 

 _The savior is dead. The savior is a myth._ The shouts at the tavern had been of faith long gone, fairy tales robbed of their happy endings, but Snow’s lips part at her assurance and she lets out a sigh, her tears stilled at last. “She’ll save us all,” she agrees, and there’s so much blind faith in her that Emma almost believes it, too.

 

The Huntsman is the rude awakening to her growing confidence, later that night. “She clings to happy endings because she knows nothing else,” he says when he brings in dinner. There’s enough for them both there, Emma notices, and indeed he takes his seat on the single chair in the room to eat with her. “Her story was always meant for that happily ever after.”

 

“And yours was always meant to be the casualty to ensure it.” Emma doesn’t mean for it to come out quite so frankly, but her words satisfy the Huntsman. She’s learning that he craves the same honesty about his situation as he presents to the world, and sympathy isn’t quite as well received as the truth is. “And you still don’t hate her.”

 

“We’re all the queen’s victims in the end,” the Huntsman reminds her, and Emma remembers the note she’d found with her breakfast, the directions within. If he’d slipped it there when a servant had brought up the food, he hasn’t mentioned it all day. And as much as he hates the queen, she knows he’s been forced into a loyalty beyond sabotage.

 

Still, though… “Her, you hate.”

 

The Huntsman shrugs, picking up a piece of chicken and shoving it into his mouth. “Being without your heart doesn’t allow for passion like love or hate. I know where the blame falls.”

 

Emma leans forward, her brow furrowing. “Wait, so are you saying that-“

 

The door opens and they both jerk, staring up at the intruder. “Well,” Regina drawls, making her way inside to regard them. “When I’d ordered your food upstairs, Huntsman, I’d only wanted to ensure that you had no reason to leave your guard again. But this is rather cozy.” Her lips are smiling but her eyes are hard as flint, flashing at whatever perceived offense they’d engaged in. “Get out.”

 

The Huntsman rises, obedient as ordered, and Regina waves a hand and slams the door shut before he makes it fully through the doorway. Emma can hear his grunt of pain from beyond the room.

 

She sighs, irritation rising already. “Calm down, Regina, he was just-“

 

“Do _not_ presume to tell me how to reprimand my own servants!” Regina snaps, stepping forward to glare at Emma. She’s in every corner of the room, pacing with long, deceptively casual strides as she circles Emma like a cat stalking its prey. “I ordered you confined. Not open for guests, and not distracting _my son_ when I’m speaking to him!”

 

“I don’t even think he knew where I was until _you_ decided to look for me,” Emma counters, taking another step forward. There’d been a time not too long ago when she’d been rightfully afraid of Regina, but her careless imprisonment has galled Emma enough that she doesn’t care right now. She wants to strike back at someone, to punish Regina in some way like the other woman has done so easily to her.

 

Regina’s hand flashes out to slap her, but Emma catches her arm, tightening her grip around the muscles in Regina’s wrist so the queen’s hand can only flail uselessly toward her. “Let go of me,” she hisses.

 

Emma shoves her and Regina stumbles backward, tripping over the chair and toppling down to the ground. “Don’t touch me,” she manages before the queen is back on her feet, a hand at Emma’s throat thrusting her backward onto her bed.

 

“Allow me to make this clear.” Regina looms over her. “You’ve been given far too much freedom here by virtue of the joy you brought my son, but no longer,” she spits out. “You are nothing to me. Do you understand?” She punctuates the statement by tightening her grip on Emma’s throat, and Emma kicks her legs out from under her in response. Regina lets go immediately, catching herself before she can crash into Emma. Her hands are splayed out on either side of Emma’s torso on the bed, and unwelcome thoughts are flitting back into Emma’s mind at their position and Regina’s body inches from hers.

 

“You mean nothing,” Regina repeats, her breath hot against Emma’s face. The spicy scent is back, as wicked as the queen who wears it, distracting Emma even in her ire. “And if you think there’s some second Regina, a kind and benevolent ruler lurking beneath the surface, you’re sorely mistaken. I’m no weak soul craving redemption.” She laughs cruelly at the thought of it, a hair longer than is natural. “And _you_ , Emma Swan…” Her head dips lower, her eyes tracing the curve of Emma’s lips with such heat that Emma trembles under her gaze. “You would never be the one to find that fairy tale, even if it did exist. You are nothing to me,” she says again, one hand leaving the bed to rest against Emma’s cheek in a facsimile of tenderness.

 

It’s perverse and twisted and _wrong_. And Emma’s unbearably aroused. She’s breathing hard- they both are- and she can feel her face tingling wherever Regina’s palm touches it, set burning alive by the nearness of this malicious, evil queen. When she’s completely honest with herself, she knows that it isn’t the freedom of the grounds or the time with Henry that’s made her so complacent. It’s the humanity she’s been searching for in her son’s mother, and it’s been her undoing until now.

 

And she’s suddenly certain that it isn’t just her who’s become overly complacent. “Then why,” she whispers as Regina’s hand moves from cruelty to tenderness with its prolonged contact. “Are you here now?”

 

Regina stares at her silently, dipping lower with every moment until Emma’s words register. She jerks back as quickly as she’d swept in for the hunt, her lips curling in disgust- with herself or her quarry, Emma doesn’t know- and she’s gone in a cloud of smoke in the next moment, leaving Emma alone again, slumped over boneless on her bed.


	7. Chapter 7

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

Neither Snow nor Regina comes back, and Emma spends a good amount of time for the next few days staring out the window, hoping for a glimpse of her friend. When Snow and Henry appear at the stables one day, safe and unharmed, she’s relieved if a bit disappointed. Her only visitor in days has been the Huntsman, and while he isn’t bad company, her tension at being locked in like this is hitting a breaking point, and she wakes up most mornings sweating and terrified that she’s imprisoned and pregnant and so, so young once more.

 

She’s had ten years to move on, and it’s frightening how easily she can fall back into old patterns, to retreating into herself and watching blankly as the Huntsman wheels in her food and tries to engage her in conversation. She’s alone in the world again, no friends, no allies, no one who would care if she were gone.

 

But when she watches Snow and Henry and sees their tiny, distant faces turn upward together to squint at her window, sees Henry wave when he finally catches glimpse of her, she feels less alone for a precious moment. She’s here for Henry and she _needs_ to see him, needs to talk to him and touch him and strengthen her resolve to stay, to remind herself how much he’s worth it. Henry is her objective. Henry is the connection that can get her through this, just as he did when he was still within her a decade before.

 

She forces a smile onto her face and waves back, warmth spreading through her as his eyes brighten and he chatters to Snow.

 

Henry makes this dim place a little brighter, sparks it with a magic that Regina could never touch or corrupt. He should have more than life under the evil queen’s thumb. _He should have the world_ , she thinks wistfully, smiling at the son she’d given up. Her satisfaction with his place here rises and falls daily now, driven by her dissatisfaction with her own lot, and it’s a struggle to separate her desires for herself from her desires for him.

 

“You seem more energetic today,” the Huntsman notes when he brings in dinner that night. Henry’s long gone from the stables but she’s still caught in the glow that seeing him brings her, and she’s cheerier today than she’s been in days.

 

She tosses him a winning smile. “I’ve decided to smash the window with my tray and jump out. Better dead than bored, right?”

 

He snorts. “I wouldn’t know.” He takes her hands and tugs her up until she’s standing opposite him, raising her eyebrows at the way he grips her. His hands are nice, though, warm and smooth, and she doesn’t pull away. “It won’t be much longer.”

 

“Really. And how many other prisoners has the queen let go just ‘cause?”

 

“How many others have her favorite guard stationed at their doors?” he counters. His voice gentles. “She won’t hold you forever.” He hasn’t dropped her hands yet and she can’t help but notice that he is attractive, more than she’d thought at first- but then, she’d been kind of distracted by Regina from the start. And there’s the accent, which is rather nice, too. He’s a good guy, even without a heart, and she’s been lonely for long enough- and sexually frustrated for days, since _every encounter with Regina ever_ \- that he’s looking really, really appealing.

 

There are better ways to pass the time than staring out a window and hoping someone walks past.

 

She shivers and the Huntsman mistakes it for discomfort, finally dropping her hands. “I can talk to Regina,” he suggests. “Convince her that we’re all better off having you running free. You don’t pose a threat to her and all you’re doing locked up is making Henry resent his mother. Which he did fairly well at even without you,” he adds, smirking.

 

He brushes his knuckles against her cheek and she remembers Regina’s palm pressed there days ago, taunting and teasing and infinitely tempting.

 

“She has nothing to worry about with you,” the Huntsman says again, his eyes seeking hers. “You’re just here to be with Henry.”

 

 _Bottom level, third corridor. Eight knocks. To destroy her._ She’s been wary until now, doubt brought on by the severe wording and the idea of destroying Henry’s mother in any form. And she isn’t here to join a coup d’état or threaten a woman who can be vindictive and petty but also loves her son and hasn’t killed Emma yet, much as she might want to. Regina isn’t her concern and for all her threats hasn’t been all that awful, so whoever sent that message won’t have her as a pawn or a partner.

 

“Right.” She manages a smile and pushes thoughts of her mysterious note out of her mind.

 

\--

 

They’re back the next day, when the Huntsman is gruff and irritable and won’t meet her eyes. He’s limping slightly and she’s sure that Regina didn’t take too kindly to his suggestion to free her.

 

It won’t be anytime soon, then, and Emma feels the urgency to see Henry more than ever. She watches him in the garden, playing with a stick like it’s an imaginary sword and darting glances in her direction every few minutes. If she could, she’d take him and run now, flee from this prison and worry about how she could possibly take care of him later. This might be his home but it’s hard and cruel, Regina more so than even the stone castle that surrounds them, and Henry deserves better than a mother who loves him but hates everything else with the same ardor.

 

She slumps down onto her bed, and when the Huntsman comes in later to deliver dinner, she glares at him and tells him to send the serving girl in from now on. She doesn’t want to see his face anymore, with its pointless promises that will never come to pass.

 

No, Emma wants a plan.

 

\--

 

A serving girl wheels a cart into the room in the morning, shutting the door behind her and bending down to pour water from her pitcher into a glass. Emma lies in bed, her breathing even and her eyes closed in a semblance of sleeping.

 

The girl turns and Emma springs, clapping a hand over the girl’s mouth and whispering lowly, “Don’t scream or I’ll kill you.” It’s an empty threat but the girl doesn’t speak, just stands trembling in place and waits. “Take off your clothes.”

 

She doesn’t have much time before the Huntsman grows suspicious and she dresses in the serving girl’s clothes quickly, tying her hair back and waiting for the door to open again. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs to the girl now huddled under her blanket, still shaking with fear. She doesn’t want to think what the girl’s punishment might be for letting her go, what her escape might do to this girl.

 

The door opens and Emma hurries out, nodding to the Huntsman and keeping her head down as she passes him. Haste is of the essence, and the Huntsman won’t be deceived for long.

 

And in fact it takes only ten seconds before a frustrated “Emma!” sounds through the hall and she takes off at a run, hearing the Huntsman’s heavy footfalls behind her. He’s still limping from whatever Regina did to him and she’s counting on that to outrun him- that and what the sheer panic of being trapped in that room again is doing to her, urging her on away from her prison at any cost.

 

 _HenryHenryHenryHenry-_ It’s a chorus in her mind, her sole focus as she darts from hallway to hallway, running down to the second floor where Henry’s room is, where she knows he’ll be coming down for breakfast soon.

 

Unless she’s already missed breakfast. The sun hadn’t been shining into her room earlier quite as obnoxiously as it had back when she’d still been escorted to the meal every morning, and her timing might be more off than she’d thought. Where is Henry? Where is Snow, who can lead her to him and maybe join them in this escape? Her room is on this floor too, back in the corridor behind Emma, but Emma can’t afford to go back and lose ground to the Huntsman.

 

She hasn’t thought this through- thought about how to find Henry, about how she’ll escape with the Huntsman at her heels- and she falters at the last door in the next corridor, preparing to take a chance and bang on it just as the Huntsman reaches her.

 

“What’s wrong with you?” he hisses, yanking her away by the wrist before she can knock. “You run away to the queen’s bedchambers?”

 

“I thought it was Henry’s room!”

 

He scowls. “Henry’s room is there!” He gestures to a door at the other end of the hall, past the balcony that overlooks the main hall, and shakes his head in disbelief. “How can one woman be so impossibly foolish?”

 

She struggles to yank away her hand but he holds fast, pinning her against the wall too tightly for her to use her knees productively. “Let me go!” she snaps, wriggling in his grasp.

 

He leans in, close enough that he can whisper in her ear. “Don’t you think I would if I could? If I were capable of…” His voice trails off and she stops struggling for long enough to press a hand against his heart.

 

“There must be a way to get around it. To wiggle past what she’s forcing you to do.” It’s all she can try, her eyes wide and pleading, desperate for something he can’t give her no matter how much he might want it. They’re both prisoners, bound by the same queen, but his is a far more binding hold.

 

The Huntsman sighs, and she feels the breath against her entire body as it rises and falls. “I’m sorry, Emma.”

 

They’re both still for a moment and Emma tenses, preparing to make another run when the Huntsman pulls away. Without Henry for now, then. She’ll hide elsewhere in the castle grounds and grab him once their guard is down. All she needs is to-

 

The voice cracks through the air, sharp enough to cut through steel, and Emma’s heart sinks. “Get your hands off of her.”

 

The Huntsman wrenches himself from his place holding her so quickly that he nearly falls over, and he’s crouched on the floor in an instant, knelt before his queen. “Your Majesty,” he murmurs, but Regina doesn’t look at him. She’s scorching Emma with her glare, framed regal and furious in front of her closed door with a pulsing red heart tight in her hand. Never has she looked as murderous as she does now, her eyes raking Emma over with that pure hatred, and Emma is left immobile for a moment, thoughts of escape dead and gone.

 

And then Regina’s squeezing the Huntsman’s heart with that same cold fury, clenching and releasing as he doubles over at her feet, and it’s so cruel that Emma chokes back her fear and hurls herself at the queen, pinning her against her door and sending the heart flying from her grasp. It hits the floor and the Huntsman screams aloud.

 

It’s just a heart, magic throbbing within it. It’s the Huntsman’s freedom at last, closer than anyone could have predicted, and Regina is snapping curses at Emma and clawing at her and Emma is holding her back as tightly as she can but the Huntsman is closest, reaching for his heart, struggling to retrieve the only thing Emma knows he’s ever craved. He takes it and holds it up to his face, wonder in his eyes, and stumbles back to a standing position, preparing to push it back into his chest.

 

In another moment, Regina hurls Emma against the opposite wall with a burst of magic and runs at the Huntsman, fingers outstretched.

 

Emma watches as though in a dream, still woozy from the magic, as the tips of Regina’s fingers hit the Huntsman in the neck just as he begins to push in the heart. Something grey and sickening slides across the skin below her fingers, spreading upward and outward in a moment, encasing the Huntsman’s chin and lips and nose and hungry eyes, covering his shoulders and arms and chest.

 

The red glow of the unreturned heart still shines bright beneath the grey stone of his palm.

 

His legs twitch once before they’re gone as well to the stone that his body has become, a statue as still and dead as the ones in the hall below them, and Emma chokes out a “No!” disbelieving, the Huntsman’s face smooth and inhuman, his fingers clenched for eternity, his pose bent over his heart forevermore.

 

Regina pulls her fingers away, pressing them into a fist as she stares at her newest creation, breathing hard.

 

This…this is what she’s known Regina is capable of, what she’s been told too many times since she’d gotten here by everyone she’s met. This is the Regina who can be an evil queen, who could hurt a man who’d been forced into slavery to her at the mere thought of freedom, who would punish them all on a whim.

 

This Regina is a monster.

 

She’s back in front of Regina before she can think it through, rage and horror molding together and producing raw adrenaline that has her flattening the other woman against the wall like the Huntsman had done to her just minutes before, desperate to _hurt_ her, to _stop_ her, to make a difference in this moment and make the evil queen feel pain like she does to everyone around her.

 

Regina doesn’t throw her aside with magic this time. Maybe she’s exhausted from the attack on the Huntsman, maybe she just doesn’t believe that Emma will do anything to her, but regardless of the reason, she’s very still, panting against Emma’s grasp, the silk of her dress cool against Emma’s thin costume.

 

“Miss Swan,” she says, licking dry lips.

 

And fury is transformed into something dark and wanting in an instant. “Shut up,” Emma snarls, and smashes her lips against Regina’s.

 

It’s angry and broken and Emma craves Regina’s pain just as acutely as she had before, their lips crashing together with bruising intensity, her hands squeezing Regina’s arms with enough force to injure a lesser woman. Regina’s lips are startled and unexpectedly soft for only a moment before she’s just as hard and angry as Emma, her hands scraping for purchase on her back. Emma has never kissed someone with this kind of loathing behind it, never felt the revulsion that powers them as they move opposite each other, coming to blows with every kiss. It’s disgusting and it’s awful and she can’t stop, pressing closer to Regina, craving more contact until they’re practically entwined against the wall as one.

 

There’s a slow buildup within her as Regina takes charge, attacking her with a skillful tongue and tracing her way down along Emma’s neck, biting with no concern for the woman keening beneath her. Emma is barely aware of her own voice, too caught up in the sensations twisting her stomach, the aching for friction and the need clawing at her with every motion. Regina tears open her borrowed outfit to trace circles around her breasts with interminable slowness and Emma curses, hating the other woman with every moment unfulfilled.

 

“Patience, Miss Swan,” Regina says silkily, but there’s a madness in her voice, a desire begging for release beyond patience. Emma’s hands seek it out, ripping at her dress until the fabric splits in the front and she’s just as unclothed, and Regina is exposed in all her glory before her. There’s no pause for satisfaction or admiration, just desperate hands on a heated body, searching for nothing and everything at once.

 

Regina’s hands tighten against Emma’s back and a leg thrusts between Emma’s, stopping her in place so she can only scrabble helplessly at the other woman’s skin, rising and falling against it frantically. The queen’s hand snakes out to shift aside her skirt and press against her for an instant and Emma sobs out a release- quick and sudden and deadly, like a snake in the grass- before Regina even touches her clit.

 

She’s riding the waves of her first orgasm when Regina attacks her in earnest, two fingers crooked deep inside her while a thumb presses swiftly against her already sensitive clitoral area, and this hits her so hard that she feels as though she’s been slammed with a sledgehammer. She can’t breathe or think or do anything but scream into Regina’s quickly descending mouth, her whole body seized up as she comes again, clenched around the other woman’s fingers and writhing with pleasure and helpless pain.

 

She doesn’t come down from her high for what feels like forever, her nails digging crescent-shaped bruises into Regina’s chest, her legs limp and rubbery and her body aloft only by Regina’s firm grasp on her, and when Regina finally lets her go she slides to the floor, still dazed and wordless. She leans against something hard that isn’t wall-shaped and it’s only then that Emma remembers the Huntsman whose destruction had prompted this all, the prisoner/guard statue that they’d somehow twisted mid-passion to have their heated encounter against.

 

She inhales a gulping sob as the reality of the moment hits her, the knowledge horrible and damning. _Fuck, what have I done?_ And the worst part of it all is how her body still thrums for the evil queen, still craves Regina with the same need as before, still washes over her whole self with naked wanting.

 

She raises her eyes.

 

Regina stares down at her, her face spasming with emotions that Emma knows are mirrored on her own. Disgust. Fury. Desire. She must be appalled with herself, loathing Emma, and when her face settles into a mask of cool disdain, Emma flinches. “Get out of my hall,” Regina orders, and gathers up the remains of her dress and retreats into her bedchamber.

 

Emma remains, half-dressed at the foot of the Huntsman’s statue, heartsick and furious. At herself or at Regina, she can’t quite say, but there’s one thought running through her head now, over and over again. _Something has to change._

She can’t be here anymore like this, can’t be reduced to this creature spurred by her needs to a poisonous attraction, can’t face this castle knowing what she does about its mistress. Whatever integrity she’s had until now feels weak and worthless, her desires to make Regina more… _acceptable_ nothing but self-delusion that she can’t deny anymore. Something must change, and it isn’t just about her own imprisonment anymore. It can’t be righted with her escape when so many others might suffer for it.

And then another thought, equally pervasive and now more tempting than ever. _Bottom level, third corridor. Eight knocks. To destroy her._

 

She drags herself back to her room to change, thankfully encountering no one along the way but an older maid who gapes at her state of undress, shirt torn and baring too much. She isn’t going to run, not now, not while Regina is still reigning over this town. Not when Regina still must be _destroyed_ , and now that word has never seemed more apropos.

 

She doesn’t search for Henry- doesn’t know if she can face him today, after what she’s done, after what his mother has done- and she doesn’t try to confront Regina again just yet. Her anger is still boiling at the same temperature as her lust and she focuses on the former, letting it direct her path through the castle.

 

The bottom level. The third corridor, where the Huntsman had once pulled her away from a locked door.

 

She knocks eight times and the door swings open on its own, revealing a small room with a bed built into the opposite wall. A girl who can’t be much older than twenty is stretched out on it. “Hey,” Emma tries, wondering if she should come back later. She doesn’t know if her resolve would be quite as strong then, if this hate will keep spurring her on much longer or if disgust will win out and she’ll flee the castle and her still simmering lust instead.

 

Fortunately, the girl scrambles up at the sound of her voice, saving her from making the decision. “Oh! You must be Emma,” she beams with a softly accented voice.

 

“That’s me,” Emma says, guarded. This must be the person who’d sent the message, but Emma’s never seen her before, not in the kitchens or around the castle at all.

 

“Good, we’ve been waiting for a while!”

 

“We?”

 

But the girl is busy, sliding her fingers along the stone wall, gripping onto a nick in the stone and pulling. It slides open, revealing a dark tunnel, and Emma gapes. “Come with me, please,” the girl says, and vanishes inside.


	8. Chapter 8

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

Once, Emma had thought that the bottom level of the castle was like a series of catacombs, spreading out in every direction and tunneling deep under the city. She’s surprised to discover that she’s right. The walls are lit with a gentle glow, narrow and made of packed dirt that seems so smooth it’s almost like… _magic_ , she thinks, and balks at the thought of it, the evil queen wielding deadly power to hollow out the underground of the castle. “Long walk,” she comments inanely to silence her turmoil again, the fury and revulsion that surges up at the thought of Regina.

 

“We’re going through the woods now,” the girl assures her. “The mines have their outer entrance near town, and some of the others aren’t as willing to climb through the mines just to have a meeting.” She grins. “Me, I’m just happy to be able to move around.”

 

She’s very pretty, Emma notes, with an elfin face and a delicacy to how she moves, even dressed in a ragged blue dress that’s torn in several places. She wonders if this is her cover, if she’s a prisoner or just made to look like one. “What did you say your name was?” 

 

“Oh, I’m sorry!” the girl touches the tips of her fingers to her lips, apologetic. “I didn’t. I’m Belle.”

 

“Belle,” Emma repeats. “Beauty and the Beast Belle?”

 

“What?”

 

“Never mind.” Are there creatures like the Beast here, or do they not exist in this land outside of time? She hasn’t heard of anything quite so fantastical here thus far, but she won’t rule anything out in a world that contains Snow White and Dr. Frankenstein and a flock of dwarves.

 

Belle slows down so that she’s walking beside Emma. “The queen locked me up years ago, before the curse.”

 

“I can believe that.” There isn’t much Emma won’t believe about Regina now, how cruel and heartless the woman can be. “Did she have a reason, or was she just feeling cranky that day?”

 

Belle snickers appreciatively. “I love a man she hates. I suppose that was enough for her.”

 

Emma thinks of the Huntsman, of the way Regina had stood in front of them, eyes flashing and heart in hand, snapping out a command. _Get your hands off of her!_

 

 _Her_ , not _him_ , and all of Regina’s fury is reserved for the Huntsman and his apparent betrayal of whatever their arrangement had been, no matter how little control the Huntsman had had over it. No, Regina doesn’t care for those who display affection for people she hates. “What did she do to him?”

 

“There’s nothing she can do to him.” And there’s a note of pride in her voice. “He’s stronger than her.”

 

There are people in this town strongerthan Regina? It doesn’t seem likely, not while Regina still holds power over them all with her curse. And as far as Emma knows, she’s only ever seemed afraid of-

 

Emma pauses, stares at the girl, her eyebrows shooting up. “Rumpelstiltskin.”

 

Belle nods, smiling. “He’d thought I was dead for so long, but I was fortunate. My last guard was dismissed from the castle several months ago, and his resentment outweighed his fear of the queen.” She furrows her brow, mock-thoughtful. “The way Rumpel tells it, he _might’ve_ been a tiny bit drunk, too. Fairy dust, you know.”

 

“Do I ever,” Emma agrees fervently. “He told Rumpel about you? And Rumpel didn’t kill Regina right then?” She remembers her skin crawling at his nearness, remembers how all her instincts had screamed that he was dangerous.

 

But then, her instincts had led her astray before- _had her craving Regina, certain that there was still goodness within her, because it was easy, because it made things easier_ -

 

Belle shakes her head. “He can’t enter the castle itself, and Regina is well protected when she leaves it. All he could do was focus on saving me. He hollowed out most of this path, but the dwarves had to do the last bit. And then I was free.” She smiles, shaking her head. “Rumpel didn’t understand at first, when I said that I wanted to stay in my cell most of the time. But I want to make a difference, and he needs someone in the castle to communicate with our agent there.”

 

“You’re the resistance, then,” Emma guesses. She’d suspected it all along, of course, but Belle’s happy nod is her confirmation, and Emma’s relieved to know that someone who pings her internal radar as a genuinely good person is a part of this. Rumpelstiltskin must be the man behind the resistance, and she isn’t certain she trusts him any more than she trusts Regina.

 

Maybe even less so.

 

They hit the mines at last, and they’re dimly lit in the corners and dusty and dank throughout. “This way,” Belle urges her on, and Emma follows her through slowly widening pathways that brighten around them with the glint of jewels lit with an otherworldly light, pressed to the walls and partially harvested in places. “Fairy dust,” Belle explains, crooking a finger and brushing a wall of jeweled rock with a knuckle. “There isn’t much use for it here, especially with so little magic in here, but I think the dwarves like harvesting it anyway.” The purple dust trails after her, drawn out of the wall with her touch like the tail of a comet until she pulls her finger away.

 

Emma presses a hand to the rock, curious, and the wall thrums beneath her palm, fairy dust emerging from the stone near her hand and converging around it. It’s all drawn in and she feels dizzy in a way that’s stronger than just the spiked alcohol but laden with clarity at the same time, and she draws a euphoric breath and pulls away her hand to stare at it.

 

It’s still glowing with magic, and Belle says, “Wow,” and laughs softly, twirling her own finger in the dust that hovers around Emma’s hand, climbing up her wrist. It takes another moment of them both staring breathless at the fairy dust before Emma remembers herself, and unsettled, she shakes her hand until the light falls from it in a shower of sparks to the ground.

 

“Such a waste!” a voice trills, and suddenly Rumpelstiltskin is on a bent knee before her, snatching up the fairy dust before it can fall any further. It jumps to him with the same energy as it had jumped onto her, and he extends a hand, cracked lips splitting into a smile as the dust is absorbed into his skin. “My dear,” he nods to Belle, and she takes his hand as he rises, looping an arm under her elbow. “And, of course, the valiant Emma Swan.”

 

“Rumpelstiltskin,” Emma acknowledges, trying not to stare at how easily Belle fits against Rumpelstiltskin, how she looks at him with such unfettered adoration. _We all have demons we’re drawn to, no matter the warning signs, no matter the knowledge of their true nature._ And can she really judge, when her own demon seems so much worse today?

 

Rumpelstiltskin smiles again, and it’s not unfriendly as much as uncomfortably significant. He can’t possibly know what’s going through her head, but he winks and nods her on as though he’s fully aware, and she brushes past him without looking back, her heart pounding.

 

Rumpelstiltskin seems unperturbed. “All our players are here today to meet you, Emma Swan.” They’ve reached a large opening in the mines, close enough to the surface that the sunlight glows mutedly from the far end of the room. Rumpelstiltskin waves his hand and candles flare to life from lamps arrayed around the room, and Emma can see that they aren’t alone.

 

There are maybe two dozen people present. A collection of dwarves- the ones she’d seen a week prior at the tavern, and this time she can count them all and deduce that yes, these are the seven dwarves of fairy tale fame. A few scruffy-looking peasants stand near the dwarves, but the other end of the room is occupied with chairs and fine clothing and men and women who delicately keep themselves distant from the others.

 

One of them speaks, a younger man with cool, unhappy eyes. “He came into our home to fetch us. Our home!” He drapes a protective arm around the heavily pregnant girl beside him.

 

The blonde woman seated in the chair beside her laughs without mirth. “You make deals with the Dark One, he’s never going to stop dropping by.” She inclines her head, taking Emma in with a glance. “I would introduce myself, but it seems unwise to grant a stranger of the queen’s castle that knowledge.”

 

There’s a sour laugh from another corner of the room, and Emma squints to see the man resting casually behind a lamp, his face dark and malicious. “Royals. As though the queen thinks of any of us as a threat.” Emma blinks and he’s suddenly just behind her, a sudden light breeze on her face the only hint that he’d gotten there without magical means. “You can tell the damn queen that Jefferson is still here,” he hisses in her ear, still hovering close enough that Emma’s skin is prickling with warning.

 

“I’m not telling the queen anything,” Emma retorts. She twists around to take in the dwarves and the lowly murmuring peasants. “I came here to do what you all want to do- destroy her.” The words catch in her throat but she still gets them out, defiant and determined and keeping the humiliation and fury of earlier still brimming at the surface.

 

“And Emma is indeed close enough to the queen to aid us,” Rumpelstiltskin agrees gleefully, clapping his hands together once. The young man with the pregnant girl jumps. “Very close indeed.”

 

“Ha!” It’s the suspicious dwarf from the night at the tavern, the one who’d defended Snow and watched her so thoughtfully when Regina had retrieved her. She’s been thinking of him as Grumpy since, and it doesn’t come as a surprise when the dwarf next to him says his name reprovingly, then sneezes into a handkerchief. “In her bed, you mean,” Grumpy snorts, and Emma’s cheeks flush red.

 

“Like hell,” she snarls at him, and there’s the discomfort at her core again, that disgust/lust that eats at her whenever she thinks of Regina now, stronger than ever at Grumpy’s implication. _No._ Not again, never again, and she cringes, wondering if her…altercation earlier that day is that obvious to everyone present. “I would never-“ She stops, because there’s nothing left to say when she _would_ , when the rest of the room is eyeing her now with even more interest than before.

 

Rumpelstiltskin laughs, a high warble that makes several people squirm uncomfortably, and Emma realizes that these people must be just as desperate as she is, to have thrown their lot in with someone as worrying as Rumpelstiltskin. “That would be to our benefit, dearie, if you choose to pursue it.”

 

“I will not!” She’s outraged at the implication, the idea that she would throw herself into bed with Regina to fight this battle, and vaguely nauseous at the thought that she’d done it even without a battle to fight. God, what had she been _thinking_ earlier? How could she have gotten herself into that? Her mind helpfully supplies her with images of Regina’s ever-so-inviting dresses, of heavy perfume and those dark-lined lips attacking her neck, and Emma takes a step back, clenching her fists together. _Not again_ , she warns herself, and her body responds with a frisson that shivers through her.

 

“Enough.” It’s the blonde royal who’d spoken earlier, glaring at Rumpelstiltskin with eyes that take in an estimation of him and find him wanting. “We have another agent in the palace. That is all that matters.”

 

Another royal, this one older and sour-faced, leans back in his finery. “The sooner we take back my kingdom, the better. I don’t care how we do it.” He scowls. “We’ve waited far too long for empty promises of saviors and magic. I say we have this woman kill her tonight.”

 

 _Oh_. Emma’s brow furrows, an unwelcome coldness filling her at the idea of it. But these are royals, probably just as quick to _off-with-their-head!_ as they would be to imprison an enemy. They don’t seem to think much of a quick murder.

 

But then, they don’t have a son who’d be left damaged by that. It isn’t even Regina’s death that horrifies her (though it does send an unwelcome unease to her face, and a memory of Regina’s face when it isn’t wreathed in hatred), not when she knows what the queen is capable of and how she wouldn’t hesitate to kill them all. It’s the thought of Henry watching as his birth mother is responsible for the death of the only mother he’s really known. It’s the thought of killing in general, of crossing that kind of line that she’d never even imagined crossing before, not even in the worst of foster homes when she’d craved escape in any way.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the blonde royal responds sharply, her eyes trained on Emma. Emma looks away, tense at the thought of what her hesitation might have revealed. “And we still have a few years before the savior comes. A contingency plan, once the queen is defeated.”

 

“A few years?” one of the peasants finally speaks up. “The savior was supposed to have come four years ago!”

 

There’s a murmur of uncertainty, and one of the dwarves says, “No, the date was only a little while ago.”

 

“It hasn’t come yet!” The pregnant girl says, and she seems near tears. “The savior will come. My daughter will be born!”

 

“Foolish optimism,” the older royal grunts, sitting back. “You’re counting on the word of Snow White and that shepherd boy?”

 

“Don’t think we haven’t forgotten what you’ve done, King George,” Grumpy says darkly, rubbing a palm against his pickaxe in warning.

 

Jefferson speaks again, close to Emma’s ear as the royals argue with the dwarves and the peasants. “This is their alternative. They don’t care for magic or the passage of time.” He laughs, unpleasant. “They just want to be princes and princesses again for more than playacting for the queen’s pup’s amusement.”

 

“And the dwarves want vengeance,” Belle puts in, and for the first time, her voice is hard. “I do, too.”

                                   

“Yes,” Jefferson agrees. “And the savior can’t give us that kind of vengeance. Not for what I owe Regina.” He’s close to Emma again, his eyes lingering on her in assessment, and she stares him down. There’s a kind of tempered madness to him, a desire for blood that shadows his eyes, and if she watches him for too long she can feel herself consumed by the insanity lurking in his gaze.

 

“And what can I do?” Emma asks, her throat dry. She’s determined to destroy Regina, to depose her and imprison her or exile her or whatever happens to the bad guy at the end of the fairy tale. She thinks she might even be okay with seeing Regina rightfully killed, as long as it isn’t her hand that does it and therefore traumatizes Henry for life. “Do you need intelligence? To talk to Snow? I can try and arm your people.” Without the Huntsman dogging her steps, she thinks it might be easier to help.

 

It’s Rumpelstiltskin who responds, his eyes alight with an amusement he doesn’t share with the rest of them. “Oh, you’ll know when the time comes, dearie.”

 

“What?” Belle asks, but Emma is distracted by the rest of the resistance, who’ve moved just as swiftly from their spats to their mutual resentment of their ruler.

 

“It’s the son whom we should be focusing on,” King George is saying, standing up and clasping his hands behind his back. “He’s our channel to the queen, just like last time.”

 

_Last time?_

 

One of the peasants laughs a brittle laugh. “And how can we get to him, short of blowing up the castle?”

 

“You’re not getting to him at all!” Emma snaps, taking a step forward.

 

“Ah, yes.” Rumpelstiltskin raises his hands, stretched out to silence the crowd. They fall quiet instantaneously, and Emma can see one or two of them with their mouths still moving but no sound emerging. “Miss Swan here is Prince Henry’s birth mother, you know. It affords her access to the castle but she has a vested interest.”

 

“Regina, giving a parent access to her child? Perish the thought,” Jefferson murmurs.

 

“I’ll say,” one of the peasants echoes, and they exchange a dark look.

 

Emma flicks her thumb against a finger, a nervous habit she’d thought she’d given up years ago. “Look, I’m willing to help stop Regina, but I’m only here because of Henry.” _And the Huntsman, and Snow,_ but the enormity of fighting for so many people isn’t something she wants to contemplate right now or she’ll probably give up altogether.

 

“It’s like Snow all over again,” one of the dwarves mumbles, and Emma glances at him, curious.

 

“Snow?”

 

Grumpy is still the unofficial group leader, and he stares back, his eyes hostile. “We’ll do whatever it takes to destroy the queen.” His hands are twisting, his fists clenching and unclenching, and Emma gets the distinct sense that he’s not being as honest as he could be.

 

But the blonde royal is nodding, her eyes sympathetic but determined, and the peasants are agreeing with the dwarves, and Emma is suddenly more unsure than ever that allying with this resistance is a good idea. It’s only when Rumpelstiltskin raises disarming fingers and says, “Well then, I’m sure a compromise can be arranged,” that the room settles down and heads are lowered in grudging acceptance- or fear of Rumpelstiltskin, more likely, but Emma doesn’t want to count on him, either.

 

Only Jefferson is still staring at her, a cold smile playing at the edge of his lips, and he slinks back to his corner as swiftly as he’d emerged from it.

 

She stalks across the room, watching the royals draw back and the peasants stare and the dwarves tense as she passes them, heading for the sunlight now dimming near the entrance to the mines.

 

“Wait.” Rumpelstiltskin’s voice is honeyed with promises and threats all wrapped together, and Emma pauses, waiting, her back to the resistance. “We will meet again after sunset in two days’ time, Emma Swan.”

 

Emma doesn’t turn around, and when she speaks, it’s less certain than anything else she’s done today. “I’ll be there.”

 

“I don’t doubt it.” Rumpelstiltskin giggles, high-pitched enough to bring on goosebumps, and Emma hurries for the light.


	9. Chapter 9

 

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

 

 

She’s tempted by the tavern and fairy dust-laced alcohol but reluctant to stay in town with the weight of all that’s happened today. It’s impossible for her to walk up to Snow’s friend and not speak about what she knows now, about what she’s _done_ today, not without the guilt of it written all over her face.

 

And she can’t go back yet, not to the Huntsman’s stony statue and Regina’s smug face, to a queen she doesn’t trust and around whom she can’t trust herself.

 

 _And that’s the worst part._ She scuffs her boot in the dirt as she wanders through the woods, never straying out of sight of the path home. She doesn’t know if she wants to kiss Regina or kill her anymore, and she has ample memory of the former to fuel her on, even when she’s angry and guilty and hates herself for it. The memories of the past day are hitting her all at once, and when it comes to Regina-

 

_Regina cold and furious, Regina’s hands outstretched toward the Huntsman, Regina panting under her grip, Regina’s lips on her neck ohgodohgodohgod-_

She’s shaking. What from, she’s afraid to say. It isn’t the first time she’s made a terrible decision regarding her love life- Neal comes to mind, though now that she’s met Henry the regrets are fading swiftly into different regrets altogether- but never has it been this bad, has she been drawn to someone so evil even the storybooks have tacked it onto her name. And Emma is dreading facing her again.

 

In the end, it’s hunger that spurs her onward, closer to the castle and further from the resistance that fills her with another kind of dread. It’s after dusk and there’s an ominous howling in the distance, and Emma quickens her step, stumbling through the woods back to a path only barely lit by the glow of the moon overhead. Her stomach is growling, memories of the breakfast she’d discarded in favor of escaping now fond and tempting, and she’s running out of the adrenaline that had kept her going until now.

 

The castle is a welcome sight when she finally makes it to the door, where the guard looks her up and down with wary skepticism and she notices for the first time what half a day traipsing through underground tunnels and overgrown woods has done to her. She’s filthy from the knees down, her boots clogged with mud and her trousers stained with grass and dust. Even her face is feeling a little grimy as she scowls at the guard, out of patience. “You know Regina wants me in here.”

 

The guard grimaces and steps aside, careful not to brush against Emma as she walks past him. The anachronisms of fairy tale land only go so far and she’s craving a shower she’s never going to get here, but scrubbing herself down with a towel will have to be enough for now. After she eats, of course, and her stomach growls at the reminder.

 

She refuses to turn her head to eye the corridor where she and the Huntsman had faced Regina earlier, but her eyes still flicker there for a moment long enough to ascertain that the stone figure is gone. It’s too much to hope that Regina has reversed the magic and the Huntsman is back and safe, but Emma hadn’t seen any changes in the main hall, either, and for a moment she indulges herself, imagines Regina’s magic as temporary and the Huntsman waiting by her door, ready to tell her again how much she sucks at running away.

 

But the door to her room is closed and the hall is empty, and when she opens it and enters, it’s the last person she wants to see who’s standing by the window, surveying her kingdom from above. “Regina.” It’s more tired than angry, Emma too exhausted to fight like she had earlier, and Regina’s eyes gleam with barely contained malice.

 

“Miss Swan, where in a thousand hells have you been?” Her voice is sharp and demanding, and when she takes a step closer Emma takes one back.

 

Regina is right in front of her in a moment, invading her personal space all over again and Emma’s stomach twists, not uncomfortably. “ _Emma_ ,” she says silkily, the name running across her tongue like liquid velvet. “Tell me where you went.” Her hand is gliding along Emma’s waist, fingers dipping into the band of her pants with no regard for the dirt that’s beginning to feel like a second skin, and Emma can barely remember where she _had_ been, let alone conjure a lie.

 

“Drink!” she finally blurts out, shoving the queen back as she does. Regina’s eyes glitter dangerously at her rejection, but Emma is able to think straight again. “I went to get a drink,” she snaps, angry all over again with the woman who’s seducing her so readily.

 

“All day?” Regina retorts, but she doesn’t try to touch Emma again.

 

Emma narrows her eyes. “I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to get back.”

 

Regina raises her neck, high and regal and Emma wants to kiss a trail up it right now- _no!_ \- she flushes and Regina persists, ignoring her sudden fluster. “I will not have you running off to consort with the villagers whenever you have a tantrum. There is-“

 

“ _Tantrum_?” Emma echoes, and she’s the one stepping forward this time, hunger forgotten for the fury that Regina is rapidly drawing forth. “You turned the Huntsman to stone!”

 

“He is mine to do with as I please!” Regina snaps back. She doesn’t retreat from Emma’s approach, and Emma jabs a finger at her, sparking at contact.

 

“Turn him back!” She’s up against Regina, eyes dark and flashing, her heart pounding in time to the needy lust that her rage summons forth.

 

“I _tried_!” Regina hisses back. “I tried a hundred times!” And Emma is so stunned at that admission that she freezes in place, so close that she can feel Regina’s breath cool against her lips. The queen sags nearly imperceptibly, just a faint submission. “It’s linked to the curse,” she murmurs against Emma’s lips- and they are close enough that Emma can feel the whisper of breath, the movement of the other woman’s lips brushing her own. “It can’t be undone.”

 

This is still her doing, even if she’s regretted one aspect of this curse, and Emma shakes with the knowledge of what’s been lost. “Then break the curse,” she hisses, and when Regina chooses to close the gap between them rather than respond, she’s lost.

 

Their lips clash together and come apart and clash together again, making war rather than love and submitting to the joining that anger and hatred can summon forth; and it’s Emma, not Regina, who shoves them down onto the bed in a switching of their positions from days before. Emma, who attacks the neck she’d been eyeing moments before as Regina sighs out her approval underneath her, and Emma who’s digging her fingers down to yank up the tight dress that Regina is-

 

-wearing absolutely nothing underneath. “Miss Swan,” Regina growls when she stops, and Emma stares down at lust-addled eyes, wondering how much of this encounter has been planned.

 

All of it. Of course. Regina hadn’t come up here to yell at her.

 

“Miss _Swan_!” Regina is grinding her hips against Emma’s, desperation in every pore, struggling for a release Emma hasn’t granted yet. And for the first time since she’s gotten to this fucking fairytale land, Emma feels like she has the upper hand here.

 

“Damn you,” Regina hisses, and _wow_ but that power is as intoxicating as Emma’s fury and she buries herself in Regina’s neck again, biting with more force than she needs to but Regina seems to embrace it, undulating against her and grabbing her waist again, rocking them together with unrestrained need. Emma shoves her fingers into her without preamble and Regina jolts against her, her head crashing against the wall, her fingers tightening enough to bruise on Emma’s thighs, her knees seizing up on either side of Emma.

 

When she comes, it isn’t with a scream but with a sharp exhalation, and Emma lifts her head to see Regina’s eyes shut, her lips parted and shaky panting the only indication of what she’s feeling. She can only take an instant to marvel at a woman so closed off that she can’t even express herself at a moment of total abandon before Regina is yanking her up and out of her. She thinks this might be the moment when she remembers herself but then the queen is throwing her against the wall, tearing her dirty tunic down the center with the distaste of a curled lip and licking a path through the sweat on her chest toward her navel and lower still.

 

And then Emma is naked with another dramatic rip- and Regina does like destroying the clothing she’s given Emma, doesn’t she- and Regina’s dress has slid up her torso enough for Emma to pull it over her head and off just in time for a wash of pleasure that starts with Regina’s tongue, toying with an ultrasensitive clit, and shoots upward into her every nerve until she can’t remember anger or humiliation or hatred, just _ReginaRegina_ and the pure pleasure she’s giving her now.

 

Her hands are tangled in Regina’s hair, winding through the elaborately styled updo and tearing her hair free from it without any conscious thought as the other woman continues licking Emma’s most sensitized places, winding her tongue within her with practiced skill. She’s helpless in all the ways she’d felt empowered before, writhing under Regina’s ministrations and craving more, more, more, until there’s finally no space for anything else and she’s sobbing out her release into Regina’s mouth, tasting herself on Regina’s lips and shuddering against her and clutching and twisting hardened tips and bringing the other woman right back to the brink and over as she comes, over and over and over again.

 

She’s still shaking when it stops and Regina’s grip loosens, and then the queen is staring down at her, eyes still hooded with lust, her hair spread out around her like a dark halo surrounding the devil itself. “Dammit,” Emma murmurs, her brain catching up much too late, the room still as heated from Regina’s presence as it had been before, and that’s enough for Regina to roll off of her and land on her feet on the ground like a fucking cat, still as graceful as she’d been before they’d touched.

 

She tugs her dress back on and ties her hair back into a simple ponytail as Emma stares at the smooth curves of her back, and when she leaves the room she looks nearly as presentable as always. She doesn’t turn around to look at Emma, naked spread-eagle across the bed.

 

There’s no guard stationed at the door for the rest of the night, and Emma feels dirty beyond the sweat and come and grime that she’s already covered in, as though she’d bought her freedom with the queen’s release.

 

Sleep is more elusive than ever tonight.

 

\--

 

Still, though, she isn’t going to pass up the chance to find Henry, now that she’s been given a clear line to him. She wakes up late in the afternoon and quickly eats the food that’s been left for her and scrubs herself off until she feels presentable.

 

She doesn’t contemplate what she’d done- _again_ \- last night. It’s easier to focus on Henry now than to sink into the puddle of self-loathing and lust that she’s been lying in all night, than considering how much of herself she’s compromised yesterday. She’s never been one for introspection or regrets, not when there are so many to consider when she begins, and now isn’t a good time to fall prey to them.

 

And when she finds Henry in the library and his face lights up like she’s everything in the world that matters, she can’t remember any of it anymore.

 

He’s hugging her tightly, arms wrapped around her waist and head pressed to her stomach, and she drops to her knees in his embrace so that she can hold him back with equal vigor. “I missed you,” he whispers into her ear, and she leans her forehead against his shoulder, wondering how she’d gone so long without this little boy in her life.

 

“I’m here now, Henry,” she murmurs.

 

They stand together for a long time, until Henry gets antsy and pulls away, his eyes bright. “So is my mother letting you stay with me again?” he asks.

 

She can only shrug in response. “I can’t predict your mother’s whims.” His face falls, and she hurries on. “But let’s enjoy the time we have for now.”

 

He nods, his face lighting up again. “I want to show you what I found!” he says, pulling her to the laptop. “Look!”

 

She peers over and almost laughs, because he’s been drawing elaborate designs on MsPaint, of all programs, showing it to her as though it’s the most novel thing about his computer. “It’s wonderful,” she agrees.

 

“Isn’t it?” He beams. “I made that all by myself. Painting! On the computer!” He’s tried to scribble something next to one awkward stick figure- it’s one with blonde curls and something long and silver protruding from its stick-hand, and Emma squints at the words, trying to make them out.

 

“That’s nothing,” Henry says quickly, following her gaze. He slams the laptop closed a hair too quickly and jumps up, heading to one of the couches at the other end of the room.

 

Emma follows, bemused. “So where’s Snow today?”

 

Henry shrugs. “She said I could have some free time today. I think something happened to the Huntsman and she was upset.” He stares down at the ground, and Emma feels a pang for the boy whose mother has forced him to grow up too fast. “Do you think she’ll change him back?”

 

Emma drops down to sit next to him, the memory of it still painful. “I don’t think she can, Henry. Not without the curse being broken.”

 

“Oh.” Henry leans into her, molding himself against the crook of her arm. “He was nice. The Huntsman…he was always nice to me.”

 

“Hopefully that savior of Snow’s will come soon and help him out, huh?”

 

Henry squirms in his seat. “Maybe. Maybe it’ll just make things worse.” He chews his lip, his eyes troubled. “Evil always wins, doesn’t it? Even if Good is really strong.”

 

“No!” And she’s feeling guilty and upset at this little boy losing even more of his innocence, watching people he’s known his whole life vanish from the evil queen’s fury.

 

She moves to kneel in front of him, to force him to look into her eyes. “Evil fights dirty, but good will win in the end, Henry. And your savior will come someday and even Regina won’t be able to stop her.” She believes in the very questionable resistance more than she believes in the savior, but _Henry_ needs to believe in something, something good and right and pure beyond this dark castle, and the savior is the lifeline she clings to now. He’s a little boy in a fairytale land, and he needs a fairytale of his own now, too. “She’ll break the curse and the Huntsman and Snow’s prince will be back, and we’ll make sure that Regina can’t hurt anyone ever again.”

 

Henry smiles a half smile at her, though his eyes are still troubled. “There are so many people she’s hurting. She hurt the Huntsman and Snow and you, and also all those people in the town. I want the savior to free them all. I want them to be safe and happy with Snow and Prince Charming and the savior ruling over them.” He sighs, wistful. “I don’t want her to hurt anyone anymore.”

 

And Emma has to inhale to keep tears from emerging unbidden, straining at her face until she’s afraid she might reveal too much to this precious little boy who loves all his mother hates, who wants only to protect the people who loathe him on principle. She thinks of Grumpy, cursing Henry’s name; of one of the peasants, suggesting methods to hurt Regina through Henry; of even the blonde royal who’d seemed so reasonable until she’d agreed that they’d use the son however they were able.

 

 _He would be a compassionate king_ , she thinks suddenly, realizing that Henry’s path is leading him unswervingly in that direction. _If they’d only let him._

 

“Hey, kid.” Henry’s staring at her, puzzled, and she knows that she’s revealed too much. She forces a smile onto her face and racks her brain for a distraction. “Come on. I’m going to teach you some stuff on the computer.”

 

It’s easy enough to find some online shooting games for him to play and Henry settles right into them with glee, pounding at the keyboard and urging her on. “Come on, Emma, there are three zombies on your right!” He fires past her and she has to pull her avatar back to avoid his enthusiastic shot. “I’m going to protect you!”

 

“Yeah, you are,” she says, grinning, and aims for the dangerous-looking spider that’s lowering itself above Henry’s character. “I’ve got you covered.”

 

It’s so surprisingly _normal_. They’re sitting in a library straight out of Beauty and the Beast, in an actual castle in Maine, at the grace of an evil queen- but there are video games and zombies and a boy who never thinks to ration his gun’s output before he runs out of steam and Emma can, for a moment, imagine that her reunion with her son had played out in another way entirely, in the world that she’s known her whole life and can deal with so much more easily. A world without magic, without people turning to stone and other people plotting, so much plotting, to overthrow a terrible dictator who rules through fear and the power of her curse.

 

She can’t regret her decision to give Henry up- and she couldn’t possibly have known where he’d wind up- but she longs for the simplicity of that old world regardless, with the company of this little boy she’s beginning to love. How easy could it have been, had she not been a prisoner when they’d met, has his mother been someone else entirely? She licks chapped lips, wondering if she’d have hated Regina in another scenario, if she’d still been the same woman but without the magic that gives her cruelty purchase.

 

Or if…

 

She doesn’t want to think about that. The evil queen is complicated enough without playing with what-ifs, wondering what else she could have been. She’s toyed with that idea before and wound up locked up for a week. So she buries herself back in the blissful emptiness of slapping a keyboard and teasing her son, and she thinks she could keep doing this for a long time.

 

When she next looks up, Regina is standing in the doorway of the library, staring at them both. There’s an undecipherable emotion on her face, and Emma can’t tell if she’s angry or just taken aback.

 

Emma nudges Henry and he blinks at her. “What? I was about to open that box!” He gestures at the screen just as he catches sight of his mother, waiting patiently to be acknowledged. “Mother.” He twitches, his finger pressing the X button down until his virtual gun is empty.

 

“Henry.” Regina is still staring at both of them, at how Henry flinches when she says his name and Emma can’t seem to look away. “It’s past dinnertime. I suggest you make your way downstairs now, before I decide that Miss Swan is too harmful a distraction for you.”

 

Henry is out the door faster than Emma has ever seen him, running past his mother and down the hall without so much as a goodbye to either of them, and Emma is left to glare at his mother, annoyed. “He’s terrified enough of you without you threatening to take away someone else he cares about, Regina. Can’t you go easy on him for a few days?”

 

“Someone else-“ Regina shakes her head. “Don’t tell me you told him about the Huntsman.”

 

“I didn’t have to.” Their eyes meet and clash, and Emma is suddenly trapped in Regina’s gaze again, helpless and frustrated and- yes, still wanting- and they scorch each other with loathing and need and dangerous desire; and Emma is about to stand, to _do_ something if Regina won’t, when the queen takes a step back.

 

She closes the double doors as she steps out, and the last thing Emma sees is Regina’s face, cold but for the cracks where emotion seeps through.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

[ ](http://imgur.com/xVNMGnf)

“The question isn’t _how_ to infiltrate,” one of the peasants is arguing over a map. “It’s who you plan on sending in this time. No more children.”

 

The older royal scowls at him across the table. “We will do what needs to be done. Your girl’s failure is of no consequence.”

 

“No consequence!” The peasant slams his hands on the table. “The queen had her thrown in the dungeons for months! If we hadn’t-“

 

“Enough.” It’s Rumpelstiltskin who speaks, and everyone falls silent at once, glancing nervously up. “No children will be sent in-“ There’s a collective sigh of relief. “ _If_ we have a better-equipped adult who is willing to go.” Uneasy silence reigns, and the blonde royal- whom Emma has since discovered is a princess named Abigail- lets out a single frustrated sigh.

 

This is the third meeting Emma has come to since the original one last week, and only a scattering of the people who’d been present at the first are here tonight. Most of the royals don’t come to the meetings, it seems, unwilling to engage with treason and Rumpelstiltskin unless they’re specifically beckoned, and most of the peasants aren’t even told about many of the meetings. And today’s topic is sensitive enough that only the inner circle of the resistance has been invited.

 

And Emma.

 

She hangs back in the shadows, more uncomfortable than ever now that the reality of her position here is hitting her at last. She doesn’t want to…she doesn’t know what she wants to do.

 

“Swan!” Grumpy is calling her over, and she steps out of the shadows, twisting her fingers together and apart and together again. “You been to the palace kitchens?”

 

She nods, reluctant, and remembers those first few days with the Huntsman, eating meals far from the queen or her room. “It isn’t just younger kids there. There are definitely some twenty-something women, and probably a few men, too. Some older servants too, but they’d notice someone new in their ranks.” The girls had fawned over the Huntsman and given her dirty looks for accompanying him, and she’d focused on food and ignored them all.

 

“Why don’t we just send her?” The older royal jabs a thumb at Emma, and Emma stares back, her eyes cold and her stomach roiling. “If she is indeed loyal to the cause, we don’t need to sacrifice another peasant to the castle.” His mouth twists into a smirk, and there’s no doubt in Emma’s mind that he couldn’t care less about placing a peasant in harm’s way. “Would we?”

 

His eyes are challenging but Emma doesn’t flinch. It had been easier that first day to talk about killing Regina, when she’d been spurred forward with righteous fury and grief. But it’s been over a week, and a week where she’s been left unchained, where she’s seen Regina stare at Henry as though he’s everything in the world to her, where she’s had a nighttime visitor too many times to write it off as a fluke.

 

More nights than not, Regina is waiting for her when she returns to her room from time with Snow or the resistance or outside the castle for a drink. They don’t address this, don’t have anything beyond scathing insults and seething hatred and contemptuous desire, but it’s enough to make Emma feel a bit nauseous at the idea of delivering the final blow in the takedown of the evil queen. Or the poison, as it is.

 

“I’m afraid that won’t work at all,” Rumpelstiltskin trills. Belle isn’t here today, Emma notices. She hadn’t been invited to the last meeting, where they’d discussed the possibility of poisoning the queen for the first time, either. “Miss Swan is our final trump card, not to be wasted on a desperate assassination attempt, are you, dearie?” He smiles at her toothily and she folds her arms against her stomach and looks away, unable to keep his gaze without displaying her uncertainty.

 

Her eyes hit Grumpy’s instead, and she quickly looks down. “Look, she has a good doctor.” One of the dwarves snickers, and it takes a quelling look from Abigail before he quiets, serious again. “I don’t know how effective any of your poison will be against the Internet.”

 

“In-ter-net?” Jefferson repeats from somewhere behind her. “Is that a cure Frankenstein has developed?”

 

“Something like that, yeah.” She wonders what it might be that they’ll send, imagines Regina’s body contorted or damaged or very, very pale. She wonders why she cares, when Regina deserves nothing less.

 

 _For Henry_. For Henry, who loves his mother when he isn’t busy being afraid of her. She thinks of an afternoon several days ago, when Snow had taken over teaching Henry archery and Regina had come down to watch them. She’d sneered at Snow and at Emma but then she’d crouched down next to Henry and helped him position his hands, and when he’d hit the target he’d jumped and hugged her in delight and she’d folded into his arms.

 

Sometimes she’s a mother, and one who does have that girl- the girl who’d save a life and fall in love with a boy beneath her station and lose everything at once- buried somewhere inside her. She’s been angry and vengeful for so long that it defines the Regina that Emma knows, but it’s the mother _(and the lover, oh, what Regina can do with her hands and her hips and that talented tongue, and she is demanding but just as eager to turn Emma into a babbling mess beneath her)_ whose face she thinks of in the end.

 

Still, she gives them as much information as she can about entering the castle in proper servant garb and how best to make it up from the dungeons to the kitchens without being seen. She might not like it- might not be comfortable with what will come from it- but she can’t stop it, either. Not when Henry’s mother is also a tyrant who’s imprisoned a kingdom. When so many suffer as long as she lives, and whatever goodness Emma sees is just as likely a mirage.

 

She can’t leave the dwarf mines fast enough tonight, and when Rumpelstiltskin deems their plans sufficient, she’s already halfway up the earthy stairs toward the moonlit town before Grumpy catches up to her. “Easy, Swan, slow it down!” He’s panting, his short legs moving as rapidly as they can to follow her, and she stops, staring down at him. He smiles. It looks alien on his sunken face, wrinkled with years of glumness. “I just want to buy you a drink.”

 

“Buy me a drink?” Emma repeats dubiously. “Last time we were at a table together, Red’s grandmother shot a hole through the ceiling.”

 

He shakes his head, fists bunching up for a moment and loosening. “I just…I want to know about Snow,” he mutters, and Emma can’t refuse that. Snow has friends here, people who love her regardless of how they feel about the savior, and she had once been queen, even if it had been stolen away so quickly. It had never been _Snow White_ but _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves_ , and Emma can give Grumpy this much.

 

They sit down at a table at the tavern and Red brings them drinks, glancing curiously at both of them. Grumpy stares down at his cup, his voice gruff as he asks, “Is she being treated well? Has the queen been making her suffer?”

 

“Yeah.” Emma downs her drink, probably faster than she should. “Regina isn’t fond of her, but she has it pretty easy. She’s Henry’s tutor, and Regina knows better than to hurt the people he cares about.”

 

Grumpy snorts, clapping his glass on the table until Red returns with a pitcher. “And the spoiled little prince? Has he been tormenting her in his mother’s place?”

 

Emma’s hackles are raised at that, and her second glass is gone as quickly as the first. Grumpy pours her the next one on automatic. “Henry’s a good kid. A really good kid.” The taste of ale is growing on her- and yes, the sneer on the dwarf’s lips when he talks about Henry is helping with that- and she takes another drink. It spreads warmth through her body, enough that Grumpy’s words are starting to sound distant as magic quickens intoxication.

 

“He’s the queen’s child,” Grumpy corrects. “There’s nothing good about him.”

 

“You don’t even know him!” Emma swallows, the fuzzy aftertaste of fairy dust caught in her throat. “He’s _good_ and he’s gentle and he’s the only reason Regina hasn’t killed Snow or me, I’m pretty sure. And while you’re all sitting around cursing his name, he’s just as desperate for you all to be saved as you are.” The words are coming out wrong, garbled by the fairy dust that’s slowing down her system, but she thinks that she’s gotten her point across anyway.

 

Grumpy is shrugging, his face still sour and dubious. “You’re his mother, too. You’re going to see what you want to see. And Snow-“

 

“Snow loves him!”

 

“Snow loves the daughter she lost!” Grumpy snaps at her, and he’s eyeing her oddly for a moment, almost expectant, so she stretches out her glass for him to pour her more. “And displacing those feelings onto her evil stepmother’s son is a sick perversion.” He tips more ale into his glass, sloshing it on the table. “She does what she must to survive, but it’s time we save her from herself.” He shakes his head, and Emma blinks, seeing several Grumpys materialize with the movement. “We’ve allied with Rumpelstiltskin before, and I’d do it again. For her.”

 

The fairy dust is muddling everything now, and when Red refills their pitcher, it’s with quiet disapproval. Emma wants to argue, but she’s swaying in her seat and the room is moving around her, and the most reasonable retort seems at that moment to be, “Your nose is so much bigger in the movie.” She snickers and pokes it, and Grumpy has no response to _that_ , so she stands, her point proven. “Henry is going to save you all,” she announces, and faces turn around the tavern. None of them seem very friendly. “And I’m going to…”

 

“Emma!” Red’s hurrying over to her, a hand stretched out to slide under her elbows and pull her from the crowd. She flashes a smile at the rest of the occupants and then she’s tugging Emma with her, murmuring something to her grandmother and leading Emma out into the night air.

 

“I’m not that sober,” Emma complains. “I mean undrunk.”

 

“No, you are not,” Red agrees, helping Emma down the path from the tavern. “I’m going to take you home, alright? Not going to leave you to those men.” She sighs. “You can stay with us, if the queen won’t set the tavern on fire over it.”

 

“She’ll be waiting,” Emma agrees. “She’s always waiting for me.” She smiles for a moment, the fairy dust strong enough to add a dreamy quality to her memories of Regina below her, head thrown back and eyes hooded over with desire and fury and loathing. It’s nice, really, and it feels like…

 

“It’s okay, Emma!” Red cuts off her thoughts, a vague hysteria to her tone. “I get the idea!”

 

Maybe she’d been thinking aloud, she doesn’t know. Red is still leading her, but now she’s turning to dart glances at her every few moments, looking confused or impressed or maybe slightly terrified. It’s hard to make out her features when they keep blurring on her face. For a moment, Red sighs and tips her face upward pleadingly, and to Emma’s shaky gaze, the glow of the moon reflects orange off her eyes. “I drank too much,” she decides.

 

“You had an entire pitcher of enchanted alcohol,” Red agrees, shaking her head. “Come on.”

 

She doesn’t really remember much of what happens before she’s standing near the castle and Red is urging her to step forward, across the grounds where she can’t enter. “Go to Snow,” she calls after Emma. “She’ll help you the rest of the way!”

 

But it’s Regina who’s waiting for her in the main hall of the castle, one eyebrow arched as she takes in a still-very-inebriated Emma. “Pull yourself together,” she orders, waving a hand, and they abruptly change location.

 

 _Whoa_. Emma sways, nearly falling over into Regina. There’s a cloud of purple smoke fading around them to reveal the queen’s bedchamber, which she’s only barely glimpsed before. It’s decorated in blacks and purples and reds, an ornate mirror glittering above a chest of drawers just to the right of a bed that Emma decides is rather hilariously queen-sized. Most of the room is bare, though, a large empty area between them and the door, and the only other bit of furniture in the room is a day bed just below long windows to their left.

 

Regina lets out an irritated exhalation and Emma is suddenly lying on her back on the bed. “How much did you drink?”

 

“Lots,” Emma admits. The blanket below her smells like Regina, musky and sharp and intoxicating as fairy dust, and she burns with her presence.

 

The woman in question is hovering above her, her nose wrinkled and her lip curled. “You smell repulsive,” she says, and then her lips are on Emma’s and when she pulls away, Emma can taste her and nothing else, the nasty aftertaste of alcohol gone and replaced. “Really, Miss Swan, you need to build a resistance or stop drinking every night.” There’s nothing but disdain in Regina’s voice now. “What is this, the third night in the past week?”

 

Emma laughs. “Build a resistance!” _No. Bad topic._ She blinks up at Regina again, squinting at her eyes, soft and inviting and plump over the edge of her dress…no, those are not her eyes. “I feel kind of…” The fairy dust is twisting her stomach, and she rolls onto her side and gags, curling up into a ball beneath Regina.

 

There’s something very motherly in the way that Regina produces a wet handkerchief from thin air and presses it to her forehead, a hand brushing Emma’s hair from her face with what’s almost gentleness before she says, her voice still sharp, “I’m going to magic away that fairy dust before you do something even more foolish and Henry never forgives me.”

 

“Oh. Okay. For Henry,” she agrees. Regina’s lips are on hers again in the next moment, her hands pinning Emma’s down onto the bed, and Emma can feel magic tugging through her, the gentle tingling of intoxication speeding up and reaching a crescendo of energy within her, purple dust joining with dark magic and pulling something deep inside her, tightening her core until she’s mostly sober and gasping, thrusting her hips upward to crash into the other woman’s. Her legs clamp around Regina’s waist instinctively and the queen’s grip on her hands tightens, fingers curving to lace between hers.

 

And then she can see Regina’s eyes as they fly open in shock and she’s arching upward, and something white and powerful comes rushing from within Emma to crash into Regina’s magic. She doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t know what it’s doing, but Regina’s lips are parted and she’s shaking and her eyes are rolling up in her head as the white energy surrounds her.

 

The queen isn’t thrown backward this time but Emma recognizes it as the energy that had shot through her when she’d tried to take Emma’s heart, and now it’s overwhelming, washing over both of them, running into the dark magic and the fairy dust and they’re all sliding into each other at once, graying as they join into one. Emma’s heart is pounding and she can feel Regina’s pulse against her, rapping out a staccato beat into her skin as she writhes against her. It’s impossible to breathe, like she’s just been abruptly stopped after running for miles, and every movement feels sluggish and immediate at the same time, and when she finally raises her face to meet Regina’s lips, the magic surges through the contact, so strong and thick that she doesn’t dare rip her lips away.

 

It’s like being high, it’s like being terrified, it’s like being in love, and the rush of the magic sparks with everything they do, each time Regina’s nails scrape against Emma’s back- and she’s naked, they’re both naked, how did they lose their clothes- each time Emma’s lips brush against Regina’s heated skin- it’s boiling like a furnace and it freezes her when she keeps them there too long- each time they move as one- and it’s sinuous and seductive and every bare inch of her skin is suddenly an erogenous zone, lit alive and scorching from the woman abovebelowabove her.

 

She comes a hundred times as the magic tugs at her most sensitive spots and sets them aflame as though Regina is touching them on her own, and Regina is quivering as they move together, trembling with uncontained sensations. She can feel all of Regina at once, her whole body laid bare before Emma’s magic, and when she imagines it enveloping her, deep in places where nerve endings are sensitized, even Regina lets out a choked sob.

 

Her body is a canvas upon which Emma can paint epics, an instrument with a thousand strings that Emma needs only to touch to create passionate, intricate melodies. The magic is _everywhere_ , and for a minute Emma’s sure that they’re floating and somehow Regina’s hands have broken free from her grasp and one is clenched in her hair and the other clenched inside her, and Emma’s teeth sink into an inviting breast and Regina jerks.

 

They both come once- once, the big time, the one where the magic reaches its peak and they’re both caught as it hits breaking point and spills over them, sending a thousand little pleasures through each of their bodies– Emma’s vision goes black but she doesn’t pass out- can’t pass out, not when her entire body is churning with power and pleasure and pain and the magic surges through her again and again- she rides it, lets it wash over her and is caught in the undertow as a willing captive to the swell.

 

The magic fades and Regina sags, boneless, into Emma’s arms. Emma searches for a caustic remark but there’s nothing to say, no energy left to speak, just the sensation of sweat slicked against skin against skin and Regina’s legs still tangled in hers. “Wh-“ Her throat is dry and it takes a few tries before she can speak. “What the _hell_?”

 

Regina’s head droops again, and she’s almost harmless like this, just another woman who Emma can pretend for a moment isn’t twisted and murderous and evil. “That wasn’t-“ She pauses, looks up, and for this moment she’s an open book, all malice gone and replaced with a quiet sorrow that Emma doesn’t understand. “That wasn’t all me.” Then the mask is back in place, imperious and dark and disdainful, and Regina is out of her arms in the next moment, standing over her. Her dress is half off the bed and completely shredded beyond repair, and Emma contentedly watches her glide over to the table beside the mirror to don a silk robe before Regina’s words sink in.

 

“Me?” Emma’s arms are working enough for her to sit up, pulling out the blanket she’d been lying on to wrap it around herself. “You think that _I_ have magic? I don’t even come from your world!”

 

“This world has some magic. It’s shoddy and unpredictable, but it’s still there.” Regina is staring into the mirror, and for an instant it almost looks as though the mirror is staring back. “You would be the exception to the rule, wouldn’t you, Miss Swan.” It’s almost affectionately derisive, and Emma rolls her eyes, unimpressed.

 

“Show me what to do with it?” It’s a demand as much as it’s a request, the magic powering her still humming strong and tempting and freeing, and Regina laughs a rich and scornful peal of hilarity.

 

“Oh, Emma.” She waves a hand and Emma is fully clothed, wearing a tunic and pants like the ones that Regina claims to loathe on her. She drawls out the next words with the dark command of an evil queen. “Get out.”

 

Emma shakes her head, unwilling to comply just yet. Not when there’s a world within her that she’s never conceived of before, when only Regina can explain it to her. “I’m not going-“

 

“Out!” the queen snaps, and Emma’s thrown forward by a whirlwind of magic, the door flying open and Emma propelled through the doorway to land with a crash in the hall outside. The door slams shut before Emma can stand and she pulls herself up wearily, stretching sore muscles as she turns to walk away.

 

She stares.

 

Snow stares back at her, a hand to her open mouth, her eyes wide and watery and horrified.


	11. Chapter 11

“Snow. Snow, wait!” But the other woman is already fleeing down the hall, turning the corner that leads to her own room before Emma is finished catching her breath. “Snow, I swear-“

 

“What?” She whirls around as Emma rounds the corner, and Emma nearly careens into her. “Are you sleeping with her?” Her face is paler than Emma’s ever seen it, her breath emerging fast and unsteady, and her voice cracks so hard on the question that it ends in a sob instead.

 

“Snow…” Emma extends her hands helplessly, words escaping her at the accusation.

 

Snow wraps her arms around herself, trembling. “Are. You. Sleeping. With. Her.”

 

Emma clears her throat, but the words still strangle her as they fight their way out. “A little bit?”

 

It must be unconscious, the way Snow takes a step back, the way she reaches for the wall to steady herself lest she fall. It still hurts, and Emma knows- knows that she’s betrayed her friend, that she’s been lost to a devil, that she’s done something unforgivable- but it still stings. And then Snow bites her lip and turns away from Emma, brown curls cascading over her shoulder with the movement, and says unsteadily, “Well, you have the right to sleep with whoever you want. I don’t have a say in your choices. I’m not your _mother_.”

 

“You’re still my friend!” Emma retorts, but Snow is already opening her door, and Emma catches a flash of her tearstained face before the door closes again. “Snow!” She bangs on the door. “Snow, please, can we talk about this?”

 

The door doesn’t budge and Emma sinks to the floor in front of it, calling out again, “Snow, I’m not leaving until we-“

 

She _wants_ to talk, and that realization stops her dead in her tracks. Emma Swan had had her heart broken for the first time at seventeen and had erected a wall around it a mile high. It’s been over a decade and she’s kept that wall tightly sealed with no exceptions, has kept her heart aloof and distant from anyone she’s ever known.

 

And she’s tired. She’s so tired of being alone, has been hurting for family since the moment she’d blown out that candle on her twenty-eighth birthday and made a wish- and Henry had knocked on the door. She’s never wanted more to love someone, to be loved by others, until that day when she’d met Henry and Snow and this whole goddamned fantasy that has swept her away, too. She wants to share with Snow, wants her absolution and advice and wants her to stop hurting because of something Emma has done.

 

Snow means enough to her that she craves it. “I just want to talk,” she finishes, and when she looks up, a door is opening across the hall and Henry is poking his head out.

 

“About what?” he asks, and Emma’s never been more grateful that the walls of the castle are thick enough to have muffled her earlier conversation.

 

“Hey, kid. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

 

He shrugs, coming out to sit next to her. “I heard your voice.” He’s dressed in a nightshirt, hair all mussed up and eyes half-closing, and he’s such a _kid_ , prince or not. She extends her arm and he snuggles against her. “Why is Snow so mad at you?”

 

“I, uh…I did something she doesn’t approve of.” It’s about as vague as she can get without lying and she still squirms, praying he won’t ask her to expand on it.

 

But he’s too sleepy to question her, just mumbles something against her shoulder that she can’t quite make out and finishes off with a whispered, “She loves you.”

 

The warmth that settles over her at the proclamation is terrifying and invigorating, the thought of there being two people here who _care_ , who have accepted her into their family so easily, a warning sign that might’ve frightened her off not too long ago. Instead, she rests a cheek against the top of Henry’s head and feels the softness of his hair against her chin as he drifts off.

 

Naturally, it’s the evil queen who finds them huddled against Snow’s door only a few minutes later, a new dress accentuating the rotation of her hips as she walks over to them. “How do you always know where I am?” Emma mutters, not quite meeting Regina’s eyes. Her body is still relaxed and limber from their last encounter but her mind’s been a turmoil of guilt and shame since she’d seen Snow, and she has no energy for another confrontation.

 

Regina arches a brow, crouching to the floor beside her. “I was looking for Henry,” she says lowly, but she isn’t quite as abrasive as usual, and she doesn’t look directly at Emma, either. “Henry, dear,” she murmurs, her voice soft to Emma’s ears. “You need to get to bed.” She slides an arm under his knees and another at the small of his back, and when she strains to lift him without much success, Emma moves her own arms to rest under Regina’s, lifting him with her.

 

She tugs for a moment before Regina drops her own arms and Emma can sling Henry over her shoulder. He shifts in her arms, his own hands settling around her, and Regina puts a supportive hand against his back as Emma struggles to carry him to his room. “I didn’t take him out here,” Emma feels obligated to inform Regina. “He came to me on his own.”

 

“As he’s wont to do,” the other woman says dryly, and Emma almost smiles at her.

 

She lays Henry down on his bed and steps back for a moment as Regina pulls the blanket over him, a finger tracing his features as he sleeps, unaware of his two mothers staring down at him. His face is peaceful, whatever lines had strained it relaxing at Regina’s touch, and Regina’s own features are smooth and serene, too, as she gazes upon him.

 

“Why didn’t you just magic him into bed?” Emma wonders in a whisper. She knows from tonight that Regina is more than capable of forcing people where she wants them to be.

 

But Regina’s face tightens again and she murmurs, “I would never use magic on Henry.”

 

“Oh. Good.”

 

Regina’s still staring at her, her lips pursed. “Why were you outside _her_ door?” She mentions Snow with practiced disdain, and Emma can feel her own hackles rise at the reminder of Snow’s hurt, and at Regina as its source.

 

“I don’t really think that’s your business,” she responds, and Regina’s brow furrows at her tone.

 

She doesn’t stay to argue about it, just turns away from mother and son and makes her way back to her room.

 

\--

 

Snow is avoiding her the next day, as much as she can while Emma’s tagging along with Henry and her again, trying to get a moment alone with her. “Snow, it’s not like I meant to hurt you-“ she tries, when Henry pulls up at his reins and his horse breaks into a gallop. 

 

Snow turns away. “Do you know what she’s done to your- to us? To me, to Charming, to this whole kingdom? What she’s done to _you_?” She squeezes her knees against her horse, speeding up to catch up with Henry.

 

“I know! I do.” Emma attempts to duplicate Snow and her horse rears, sending her toppling down to soft grass yet again.

 

“Emma!” Henry notices before Snow, who’s studiously staring at the grass ahead of her, and he’s turning to go to her when Snow gallops closer and murmurs something to him. He nods and pulls his reins until his horse turns to head out into the fields.

 

Snow is the one who climbs down to help Emma, stretching out a hand to yank her up, and Emma doesn’t miss the opportunity to continue. “I know it’s a terrible idea and I know what she is and what she’s done. It isn’t like I meant for this to happen! And it won’t again,” she says, completely without conviction. She knows herself too well, knows that this has been going on for too long now to give it up. Not while they’re in such close quarters. Not when she only has to see Regina’s face before her legs turn to jelly and she’s calculating exactly how long it’ll take to pull off whatever (completely indecent! They’re all indecent now, teasing something Emma craves more than decent coffee) dress the other woman is wearing that day.

 

Snow shakes her head, sinking down to the grass below them. “Emma, I can’t tell you what to do, no matter how much I disagree with your decisions.” She pauses, frowning. “And how… complicated this might be. We don’t choose who we’re attracted to, I suppose. Even if it’s someone as incapable of redemption as the evil queen,” she adds, and Emma’s head is starting to ache at the honey-laden pressure in Snow’s tone.

 

She has that right, and Emma won’t begrudge her it- she’s probably right anyway and Emma is better off alone than with Regina. An evil queen has never been the fairytale dream- though Maleficent had been a looker even in cartoon version, actually- and Emma can’t think of one way that this won’t end without her compromising who she is or with a broken heart.

 

“But what about Henry?” Snow asks, and Emma looks up to stare into the distance, where Regina’s son is still riding, glancing back at them with curiosity. “What are you going to tell him about your relation-“ She stops, swallowing. “About whatever’s between you and Regina?”

 

\--

 

She doesn’t know what to tell Henry, who loves his mother and loathes all she is and would be just as horrified and damaged by her revelation as Snow is. And Snow, at least, understands what kind of attraction might draw Emma in, why adults make bad decisions sometimes. Henry is young and naïve and Emma doesn’t dare be the one to open his mind to all the grey places he doesn’t have to go just yet.

 

He’s so much more innocent than she had been at that age, privileged and untouched by the ravages of evil- the evil of the real world, where people aren’t turned to stone but they break and shatter regardless, and with each individual shattered comes edges sharp enough to break someone else. She never wants Henry broken.

 

And yet her feet lead her to the royal dining hall as dusk approaches, seeking Henry out despite her better judgment, and it’s only once she’s there that she can justify her own selfishness in involving him, only once his eyes light up as Regina’s darken and he beams at her from across the table as she takes a seat.

 

The server glances at her bare place at the table and then Regina, frowning as he awaits further command.

 

“What a surprise to see you here,” Regina says frostily.

 

Emma tosses a sidelong glance to Henry, whose grin is faltering in the face of his mother’s cool reception. “I…uh, I thought I’d join you for dinner.” She doesn’t say _please_ or _if that’s all right_ \- Regina doesn’t react to civility like she does Emma’s brashness- but meets Regina’s eyes as fully as she can, and there might be a tiny bit of the uncertainty from last night in Regina’s face when she looks away.

 

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Regina demands of the server, irritated. “Go set Miss Swan a place. And don’t ever make us wait again.” Henry stares disbelievingly at his mother but Emma smiles at the table, and when she dares meet Regina’s gaze again, there’s a thoughtful smirk playing at the queen’s lips.

 

They eat in silence as Henry tells Regina about his day, Emma interjecting only to defend her honor at his assertions of her terrible horsemanship. “Hey, kid, we don’t all grow up with pet ponies.”

 

“I did.” It’s Regina who cuts in, an elegant eyebrow raised in amusement. “Long before I was any royalty that mattered. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in this reign who hadn’t ridden a horse as a child.”

 

“Yeah, well, we had bikes and cars to worry about out there.” Emma gestures vaguely in the direction she thinks might be the rest of Maine. “Bet you’d have more trouble with them, too.”

                                                                                                                                            

“Those metal boxes with the wheels attached?” Regina wrinkles her nose. “I would far prefer a proper steed to one of those. How can you even see properly when you’re inside the box? Where does the driver sit?” She shrugs, nearly toppling over the nervous server as he tries to lean in to set a plate down in front of her. “How can you ride something so _false_ , without the wind in your hair and the feel beneath your knees as a horse gallops? Without a steed as aware of you as you are it?”

 

Her eyes are almost dreamy with the thought of riding and Emma can’t help the smile edging up her lips at the other woman’s sudden fervor. She hasn’t seen Regina quite this passionate about anything but Henry before, and there’s a whole new level of beauty to her when her eyes are shining and the smile on her face is genuine. It’s enough to make Emma forget that there are other people in the room, to want to reach out and trace the lines of Regina’s face until they stay that way, before-

 

And then Regina’s eyes are black and livid and the server is half bent over Henry’s place when he’s thrown backward, pinned against the wall and helpless against the queen’s fury. “How dare you?” Regina hisses, and Emma jumps up to grab her arm as she plunges it forward into the man’s heart.

 

“Regina, what the hell?” The muscles under where her palm is resting are tense and coiled with rage, the man in front of them moaning pleas for mercy, and Regina is quivering with a fury Emma doesn’t understand at all. “Regina!” she snaps again, and this time the other woman finally pauses, her hand ostensibly wrapped around the server’s heart from the sounds of his moans.

 

“I am no stranger to poison,” Regina says slowly, and a chill spreads through Emma’s body as she remembers the resistance’s last meeting. They’d moved _fast_ , much faster than she’d have thought this would take. And she can’t quite justify the relief that washes over her horror as Regina calmly dismisses the poison.

 

The terror that follows Regina’s next words is something else entirely, freezing Emma in her tracks and filling her with dread. “But to target my _son_ as well?” Her hand tightens around the server’s heart and he chokes.

 

“Please, I know nothing! I only brought the meal in from the kitchen!” Emma hears the protest as though from afar, the food in front of Henry’s seat all she can see. The poisoned food, the food meant for the queen but just as gladly offered to his son and their guest for dinner.

 

The resistance doesn’t care who is killed in the crossfire. Regina’s too big a target for them to bother to discriminate, and Emma’s nearly too shaken to react when Regina yanks the heart out and snaps, “Shut your mouth!”

 

Nearly. And there’s a fragment of her that’s just as willing to see this man die for his error, but too much of who she is is dependent on the part of her that squeezes Regina’s arm and says with fire, “Not him. We don’t know if it’s him who did this.”

 

“I did nothing!” The man repeats, turning to gabble at Emma as he recognizes a new hope. “I can tell you who cooked it! Who brought it to me! I’ll tell you anything!”

 

“Shut up,” Emma says fiercely, because this is still the man who nearly fed Henry poison, and even if he’s innocent she’d wouldn’t regret his death nearly as much as she should. “You know nothing.” She knows who’s behind this, even if she can’t pinpoint his messenger, and he’s the one she wants to see pay, unlikely as it is.

 

Regina turns her glare on Emma, and it’s like being scorched alive. She quails under it for a moment before she can gather herself again. “Regina, please. Not in front of Henry.” Their son is still sitting in his place, clutching onto a spoon and staring down at the polished wood of the table. “Don’t…”

 

And where pleading would fail, it’s Henry’s bowed head that succeeds, and Regina shoves the heart back in just as angrily and snaps, “Go back to your village. If I ever see your face again, I’ll kill you where you stand.” She’s still trembling when the server scampers out, but fear has replaced fury and she’s breaking away from Emma to run to Henry, who’s quick to wrap his arms around his mother as she falls to the ground beside his chair, burying her face in his arms and sliding him into her embrace.

 

Emma, forgotten, can only watch.

 

This is Rumpelstiltskin’s doing, Rumpelstiltskin’s plots and his machinations that have put Henry and Regina in danger. _No_ , she corrects herself firmly. _That have put Henry in danger. Period._ She can’t afford to worry about Regina, not when she’s the villain who’s had this coming, who’s chosen her own path in life and continued down that dark way until now. That way lies complications she can’t explore without inspecting some very questionable decisions she’s made of late.

 

But Henry…Henry’s just a kid who loves his mother and dreams of a day when her tyranny is defeated, without ever realizing that that won’t be anything as simple as her stepping down as queen and living happily ever after in the village. No, there is no happy ending for Regina, not if anyone else is going to have one of their own, and Regina’s just as trapped in her position now as she might have been before her unwilling marriage had come to an end.

 

 _Stop thinking about Regina!_ something in her subconscious growls, and Emma pulls her gaze away from the mother still whispering promises to her son, from the son still clinging to his mother, and turns to the door instead.

 

There is one thing she can do, and that’s confront the man who’s responsible for this. Henry cannot be in danger, and she’s going to get that promise from Rumpelstiltskin or reveal everything to Regina.

 

It’s the least she can do, after standing by and letting them carry out this treacherous plan that had nearly murdered the son who isn’t hers but feels like one of her own regardless.

 

She’s halfway down the hall when Regina calls her name from just outside the dining hall, Henry scampering past her to run up to the library. “Emma, wait.”

 

All that remains of their ordeal is a slight softening in Regina’s face, and when she moves closer- close enough to invade Emma’s personal space, a hand sliding up her tunic to stroke her back possessively- Emma can see the desperation for contact right now, for a release of the frustrations that Emma feels keenly as well. “I’m going to discuss this situation with Doctor Frankenstein. Be in my quarters before I’m finished.” Her breath is hot against Emma’s cheek, and Emma’s eyes fall closed as Regina’s teeth tease at her earlobe. Emma shifts closer unconsciously, plans of finding Belle gone as quickly as Regina’s hand had found the small of her back, and Regina hums with approval as Emma twitches under her ministrations.

 

“You know,” she breathes. “I may yet have to find some more time for you to spend with Henry if this continues.”

 

Something in Emma’s throat closes at that proclamation. “Wh-what?”

 

Regina smiles against her ear. “I do have…incentive to keep you happy, Miss Swan.”

 

It’s easy to push her away then, to step out of her grasp, Emma’s heart thudding with newfound anger, finally directed at Regina again. “I’m not your whore or your huntsman, your _Majesty_ , “ she retorts, her hands clenching into fists. “And I won’t be _bought_. Not by you. Not by anyone.”

 

She’s angry, probably angrier than she should be, but she’s so tired of being used and manipulated by the people here for their every agenda. And from Rumpelstiltskin it feels like she’s a pawn in a game he plays with everyone, but that doesn’t sting like it does to hear from the person she’s sleeping with that she’s no more than an object to bring Regina pleasure. Just a bed warmer, getting a treat for her good behavior. Just a pet.

 

She can’t control this anger, can’t afford to equate it with any kind of heartbreak when this has been a strictly physical arrangement all along. She can’t do anything but lash out at Regina, who’s standing in front of her, her lips parted in confusion and maybe a little guilt. “Get out of my way,” she snaps, shoving past the queen, and Regina is knocked forcefully to the side, enough for her to have to catch herself against the wall before she falls, but she still does nothing.

 

Emma storms up the stairs, anger fading into exhaustion and heartache with every step until she’s standing in front of Snow’s door instead of her own. And when Snow needs only one look at her before she’s wrapped in the other woman’s arms, Emma feels like she can rest at last.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Snow is gone in the morning- which is probably for the best, Emma thinks, guiltily recalling several hours of rambling about every failed relationship she’s ever had and how Regina is the _worst_ \- not even a relationship because would she even call it that? No, because Emma knows better than to date another psychopath and really she’s had a boyfriend who’d left her pregnant in prison and he’s still nothing in comparison to Regina, who cursed a town on a whim and turned _her_ last boyfriend to stone and really doesn’t have any positive attributes aside from how much she loves Henry and probably her boobs, if Emma feels like being honest, but…

 

Snow had listened patiently and looked pained throughout and she’d left at the crack of dawn so she wouldn’t have to hear anymore about her former evil stepmother, probably. But she’d also been sympathetic last night and plenty understanding- well, in between grimaces- and knowing her history with Regina, had gone above and beyond friendship in letting Emma vent that much.

 

Snow is a gem, and she probably doesn’t deserve to be subjected to Emma again until at least after breakfast, probably. She considers skipping breakfast altogether, holding off on seeing Regina for just a little longer and not having to cope with whatever vengeance the queen has in mind for her insolence, but she’s even more certain that Regina would be equally smug at her absence as she would her punishment. Regina thrives on weakness, and Emma can’t afford to show her any more than she already has.

 

So she changes and heads back down to the dining hall and takes her seat opposite Henry, and when Regina stares at her, she meets her gaze impassively and continues working on her eggs. It’s easier to restrain her anger and hurt when Henry’s in the room, counting on her to be the, well… _sane_ one who doesn’t go around turning the people who piss her off into stone. Still, she’s cutting her bread into chunks a little too savagely, taking bites with equal parts hunger- she’d skipped whatever dinner Henry and Regina had taken last night after the incident, and she’s gotten spoiled by the daily elaborate feasts in this castle- and tamped down frustration.

 

“Henry, what is on your agenda today?” Regina asks, but her eyes are still on Emma and her fingers are playing along the edge of her knife almost imperceptibly.

 

Henry gulps down some juice. “Snow says that the weather is nice enough that we can go out to the lake and swim today. Emma’s going to come, right?”

 

“Well, I’m sure Miss Swan would hardly pass up the opportunity to spend more time with Snow White.” Regina’s stare is flinty and unyielding, the barest sneer curling at her lips.

 

Emma frowns, more confused than offended. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“They’re just friends, Mother!” Henry interjects, looking far more frantic than the situation warrants, and making Regina’s eyes narrow even more with his immediate defense of Emma.

 

Shit. Shitshitshit. She’s tense suddenly, not even sure why this is so worrying but certain with every millimeter that Regina’s eyebrow raises that this is getting worse and worse. “Henry, I’d love to spend the day with you, first and foremost,” she says quickly, and only then does she remember that she’s the injured party here. Regina’s on the offensive now, but Emma holds on to her fury, lets it blossom to fruition with every silent moment. “That is, if your mother _allows_ it,” she finishes, her voice frosty as she looks back up to meet Regina’s glare.

 

A shadow passes behind Regina’s eyes- for a moment there might be apology there, but it’s gone as quickly as it’s come- and she jerks away from Emma’s gaze, glancing back to her son. “Actually, I’ve found you a new guard to fence with,” she says, her voice dripping with honeyed falseness. “You’d better begin immediately. There’s no need to meet your tutor at all today, actually.”

 

Henry’s eyes go wide. “What did you do to her?” he says, just as Emma snaps out the same question. Regina has it in for Snow today- more than usual, anyway, and Emma can barely bite back her accusations in Henry’s presence. If Regina had chosen to take out her rage at Emma on Snow, if Snow’s in danger or worse-

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Regina snaps, her voice pitched just slightly higher than natural. “I have better things to do than worry about that imbecile. Now get to the armory before I decide that this guard isn’t good enough for you, either, and you go another week without any fencing.”

 

Henry opens his mouth and Emma kicks him under the table, thinking better of antagonizing Regina any more when she’s in such a…dangerous mood.

 

And there’s the other problem with being involved with Regina, she muses as she follows Henry down to the armory. No matter how furious Emma is with the queen, Regina still holds all the power in her hands. There’s no equality in a relationship like that, no vulnerability on Regina’s side, and Emma is helpless to do anything but stew in impotent rage and keep everyone else out of the crossfire.

 

They meet Snow standing in front of Prince Charming’s statue, murmuring words that Emma can’t make out beyond a despaired tone and Regina’s name, but Emma’s just glad to see that she’s been left unharmed. “No, Regina hasn’t spoken to me at all today,” Snow says, seemingly puzzled at their concern. “I wonder if…” She bites her lip. “Never mind.”

 

She doesn’t offer to join them in the armory and doesn’t explain why, just heaves a sigh and leans back against the statue that was once her husband.

 

The guard introduces himself as Gareth and is kinder than Emma would have expected after Graham’s bitter sarcasm, but this is Regina, after all, and her priority is Henry’s happiness. He tests Henry’s grip and invites him to choose a new sword better suited for his size, and Henry follows with a grin wider than Emma’s seen on him in a while.

 

One of the maids that Emma vaguely remembers from the kitchens is perched on a stone chest, gossiping gleefully with the guards milling the room, and Emma leans back against the wall, listening as unobtrusively as she can while keeping a watchful eye on Henry and his new teacher. “Pippa went in to clean her room this morning and _she_ said that she didn’t even sleep in her bed last night! Can you imagine?”

 

A guard snorts. “I heard she spent the night on one of the upper floors. Probably cursing us all with something gruesome after that attempt at dinner.”

 

“What’s worse than her last curse?” the maid retorts, and there was a bout of coarse grunts at that.

 

“Gout, probably,” the guard says, and the laughter thrums through the room, still low enough that Henry doesn’t hear.

 

Regina. Emma frowns, irritated despite herself. Regina had slept on one of the upper floors last night. Who had she sought out, to replace Emma in her bed? What new toy has she found?

 

It’s only later in the day, still simmering at this new information, that it occurs to Emma exactly what Regina might have been doing. She climbs back up to her room, feeling rather presumptuous about her theory, and sidesteps the breakfast cart still waiting for her to lie down on her bed.

 

It’s thick and heavy with Regina’s perfume, and she sighs and curls up against her blanket and closes her eyes, trying not to think about what might have happened there last night. If Regina had come here to confront Emma, or if she’d…?

 

She doesn’t know what to think, so it’s easier not to think at all and to just inhale the traces of Regina’s scent on her sheets and close her eyes for a while, just enough to drift off into a slumber wracked with dreams of an evil queen whom she’s better off not knowing.

 

\--

 

When she wakes up, there’s a new tray in her room and a message from the resistance alerting her to a meeting that night. She crumples it in her fist and shoves it into the mashed potatoes beside it.

 

\--

 

“I am sorry about it,” Belle says, but there’s only the barest hint of apology on her face, and she’s looking anywhere but at Emma as Emma paces the length of the cell. “I don’t have any control over what they choose to do. And they do have to use every advantage at their disposal to destroy the queen.”

 

“You have control over Rumpelstiltskin,” Emma points out. “He listens to you. He cares about you! And if you tell him that this kind of wide-range attack is-“

 

“I won’t,” Belle cuts in, and there’s something fierce in the way she tosses her untidy, matted hair and sits back on her hard bed. “The queen is evil, Emma. She must be stopped. At any cost.”

 

Emma scowls. “And Rumpel isn’t?”

 

Belle twitches, uncomfortable. “I can see the good in him, the potential for him to be something better than he’s become. Regina is beyond help now. She’s black and cold and vile. There’s no capacity for redemption in someone so immovable.”

 

_No._ She can’t believe that. She can’t afford to believe that, not when Henry loves his mother so much and she gentles around him. Not when Emma’s still alive to doubt her.

 

“She’s not…” Her voice is dry, and she swallows, uncertain again. “Maybe she’s irredeemable. But she’s capable of love. And that has to mean something, right?” It sounds unconvincing even to her. She’s chased some pretty sick people over the course of her career. Plenty of them have loved their wives or children or parents. It’s never made them any less loathsome.

 

Belle is giving her a knowing, pitying look, and when she finally speaks past Emma’s flush, it’s kind. “You’ve been in close quarters with her for a long time. You haven’t had much of a choice but to try and find good in her, I suppose.”

 

Emma squints at the girl. “Are you accusing _me_ of Stockholm Syndrome?” It’s almost laughable to hear it from the girl who’s shacked up with Rumpelstiltskin in the past, even as it tugs at all the uncomfortable places that the knowledge that Regina holds all the power in their interactions does, too. “Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard about Regina and me, but I’m not compromising myself to coexist with her. And I’m not going around finding reasons why she’s really a good person underneath it all.” The implication is clear, and Belle’s eyes narrow at the unspoken words between them. “I know she’s terrible. I’m not trying to stop you from stopping her-“

 

“Aren’t you?” Belle cuts in, and Emma looks away. “Look, Emma, I do like you. I think you can help Rumpel in ways that no one else has been able to before. But if you don’t distance yourself from Regina, the resistance will have no qualms with hurting you if you’re in the way.” Her face is guileless, her determination clear. “Please, don’t doom yourself for a queen whose only strength is in our suffering.”

 

There’s only one question left, and Belle’s finally without answer when Emma asks it. “And what about Henry?”

 

The damning silence is enough to send impotent fear through her.

 

\--

 

She might not be able to protect him by spending every moment of the day with him, watching servants warily and diving in to taste his lunch before he can take a bite, but she’s determined to try, to both Henry’s and Snow’s bemusement. Henry shrugs and accepts the fact that Emma’s now walking him to meals and snapping at the guard he’s fencing with and interrogating Snow on every step of their day together, pleased enough just to have the time with his birth mother. Snow levels knowing gazes at Emma but doesn't question her caution at all.

 

How many other times had Henry been targeted by the people? Snow won’t talk about it beyond confirming that this isn’t the first time, and Emma’s tense with the knowledge that this compassionate-eyed boy who might grow into a king would be so reviled by both strangers and people within the palace.

 

If the resistance wins, she’d thought foolishly that she might take him in. She can’t be a mother- she doesn’t know how to be a mother- but Snow will be queen, won’t she? She’s basically raised Henry from birth and he’d be as beloved as his tutor and Emma won’t have to watch shadows in the candlelight for threats. But the resistance has classified Henry as accomplice instead of pawn, and now she isn’t certain he’d even make it out alive.

 

She knows that Regina won’t survive at all if Rumpelstiltskin has his way, but that realization sends a funny kind of nausea through her system and she’d rather not dwell on it at all.

 

Regina is now the only one she’ll trust alone with Henry, certain that she can and will protect him from any threats, and she finds herself loosening up at last at dinnertime each day, laughing with Henry and allowing herself to breathe. Regina’s comments to her from the night their food was poisoned still burn nearly as much as her bare skin does whenever Regina brushes past her, but Emma’s preoccupied enough with Henry’s safety that she can overlook them and avoid any time alone with Regina, opting to spend her days with Snow instead.

 

The more Emma smiles at dinner, the sharper Regina’s criticisms are and the darker her glower grows, and she’s icy and unfriendly and mocking to the point of biting hatred now. “Really, Miss Swan, it’s clear enough that you’re useless without having to display it in front of my son,” she snaps after Henry tells them how Emma had nearly gotten herself impaled with an arrow that day.

 

Which isn’t fair, because she’s actually shown some serious aptitude with a sword and Snow had handed her the arrow upside down so of course she hadn’t noticed that the arrow had been pointing the wrong way! She’d been far more preoccupied with a suspiciously close guard who’d been collecting arrows from the next target than she’d been the task at hand, anyway. But she doesn’t say any of that in the face of Regina’s scathing ridicule, too weary of tension to add even more to this table. “Okay, Regina,” she finally shrugs, indulging her.

 

“You will address me as _Your Majesty_.” Regina’s spoon is melting in her hand, the soft metal losing its shape and sliding down onto her plate as a purple mist envelops it, but the queen doesn’t seem to notice. “I am your queen now, or has that dull brain of yours forgotten that already?”

 

Henry squeaks in alarm, glancing from his mother to Emma and back again to his mother. “Henry, if you’re finished, you’d better head up to your room,” Regina says coolly, her eyes not leaving Emma. “It’s getting late.”

 

“I’ll go with him,” Emma says quickly, standing with so much eagerness that her chair nearly tips over.

 

They’ve made it across the main hall and up the stairs before Regina catches up to her. “I think you’ve taken enough liberties with my son already, Miss Swan.” She bites out her name like it’s a curse, and Emma chews on her lip, trying to swallow any responses snarky enough to get her into more trouble with the queen.

 

“Mom, I’m going to bed. Hours early, even.” Henry clutches Emma’s hand, oblivious to how it makes Regina’s hands curl into fists. “Can’t Emma just come upstairs with me? She and Snow and have been telling me a story about-“

 

“Enough!” Regina barks out, and it’s so harsh that Henry stumbles against Emma, staring at his mother as though she’s never rebuked him before. Emma squeezes his hand, her own ire growing at his fear. “Henry, to _bed_. And I don’t want to see either of those hapless idiots in your room tonight at all. Is that understood?”

 

Henry’s grip is so tight on Emma that her hand is falling asleep. “Mother-“

 

“ _Is that understood?_ ” Henry unravels in the face of his mother’s fury. His face crumples and his eyes well up immediately, and it’s all Emma can do not to antagonize his mother any further before he half-runs, half-climbs up the remaining stairs and around the corridor to slam the door to his bedroom shut. Whatever grudges have faded over the past week are back in full force with the sound of Henry’s fading footfalls, and suddenly Emma is clenching her fists and trembling with rage as Regina stares back at her with a glare bordering on murderous.

 

She doesn’t care.

 

She storms up the stairs without checking to see if Regina’s following, and when the other woman makes it to the hallway it’s just in time for Emma to grab her by the arm and swing her against the hard stone wall, her eyes flashing and nothing but fury clouding her mind. “You don’t take out your issues with me on Henry, you hear me?” she hisses in Regina’s ear, an arm rising to trap Regina against the wall. “I don’t know what your problem is, and I don’t care, but if you even _think_ about treating Henry like you treat me ever again-“

 

The other woman is breathing hard against her, the fury that had been on her face melting away into something that might have been guilt, but Emma’s beyond caring. “Don’t tell me what to do,” Regina says, but she can’t seem to muster up that imperious superiority that had been there before. “I’m-“

 

“You’re a self-centered tyrant who doesn’t deserve a kid like him!” Emma snaps, and then Regina is suddenly gone from her grasp and reappearing a few feet away, her back to Emma as she stalks toward her own room. Emma follows, undeterred. “And what the _fuck_ is up your ass lately, Regina? You’re treating me worse than you treat Snow, and that’s-“

 

“Oh, and it’s all about your precious _Snow_ , isn’t it?” Regina sneers, and the anger is back, coupled with contempt she doesn’t attempt to conceal. She waves a hand and her door slams closed behind Emma with as much force as Henry’s had moments before. “You can’t seem to stay away from her these days.” Now it’s Regina who’s standing in front of Emma as Emma’s backed against the door, her voice low and predatory. “Tell me, what is it about that insipid little girl that you could possibly find appealing?” She’s still breathing a little too loud and quickly and Emma can’t look away from the image, the evil queen dominant and threatening. Unbidden and completely inappropriately, her eyes shift to Regina’s lips.

 

Regina’s eyes dilate and she twitches a finger, and Emma is suddenly on the bed, Regina still inches away. The queen’s hands are on her waist, sliding around to trace the contours of her hips as she whispers, “What could she give you that I can’t offer.” It’s a question with no need for an answer, and Emma curls her own fists into Regina’s dress as the other woman’s teeth nibble at her neck.

 

She can’t. She can’t let herself do this, not after what Regina had said last week. She still has some dignity, still has some mastery over herself. And she isn’t Regina’s toy to be pulled out and played with and insulted and baited. “Regina, we-“

 

“Has she ever…” Regina’s fingers are tracing her inner thigh now, and Emma can feel herself weaken, common sense defeated by lust and the constant need to get closer to Regina that dogs her every move with her. She doesn’t want this now, but it’s hard to remember that when Regina is filling her senses, intoxicating and overpowering at the same time.

 

“Regina,” she whispers again.

 

“I thought I told you to call me Your Majesty,” Regina hums against her neck, and whatever hatred had been dripping from her voice until now has faded into a quiet contentment.

 

“Regina, stop.” Regina stops immediately, drawing back enough that she can sit on her bed facing away from Emma, her back rigid and her arms tight around her frame.

 

Emma winces despite herself, closing her eyes in exasperation. “Look, if this is why you’ve been so crabby lately…” Regina stiffens even more, and Emma tries again. She doesn’t owe an explanation to Regina, but she can’t help but try to ward off the visceral distaste at Regina’s insinuations. “You know that Snow’s only a friend, right? I’m not interested in her like that.” Really, _really_ not interested. “And…I mean, that goes both ways. She basically treats me like she treats Henry, so either there’s nothing between us or you’ve got a fairy tale princess child predator on your hands.” She laughs, but Regina doesn’t move, her spine still straight and her hands clutching at her sides.

 

So Emma decides to go for broke. “But seriously, what the hell? I don’t owe you anything, and you can’t treat Henry _or_ me like that. I’m not your _plaything_ \- no matter how much you might think otherwise,” she adds, scowling at the ceiling. “And I thought we were past the days where I was your prisoner, too.” It’s probably a mistake to remind Regina of those days spent locked in a room at the queen’s discretion, but Regina isn’t moving to assert her queenship again, or demanding that Emma leave. “I’m here because of Henry, and because I really do care about Snow, even if it’s not the way that you think.”

 

She isn’t interested in running anymore- though she does miss city lights and cell phones and transportation that doesn’t try to throw you into mud pies because it thinks it’s funny. This ridiculous, impossible place has become her home, somehow, and she can’t imagine being anyplace else without the people here.

 

She doesn’t say she’s here because Regina is here, but sometimes it’s easy to think otherwise, unwise as the feeling might be. Regina is impossible and stubborn and has a cruel streak that borders on childishness half the time, and somehow Emma can’t stop thinking about her, can’t stop craving her in ways that should really just be physical. Regina also loves her son and has moments where she actually does seem to want to be _better_ and she has been known to surprise Emma, once in a rare while.

 

And perhaps it’s most surprising now, when Regina’s fingers loosen their vice-like grip around herself and she murmurs, “I’m sorry.”

 

“What?” She isn’t sure that she’s actually hearing what she thinks she’s hearing, and she scoots back to sit against Regina’s pillows, watching the profile of Regina’s pained face as the queen speaks again.

 

“I never meant to…I never meant to imply anything about you. You’re not mine, and you’re certainly not my plaything.” Regina bites out the word with disdain. “You’re important to…Henry, and I’m grateful that he has a friend, unconventional as you might be. I suppose I was attempting humor, but it was in poor taste.” She ducks her head. “I really have been sorry.”

 

She looks a little amazed with herself and Emma can’t help but share that amazement. She’d expected Regina to wait for forgiveness or demand it- and Regina is always demanding, that much Emma knows to expect- and for things to go right back to where they’d been. She doesn’t expect the queen to sit bent over on her own bed and take full responsibility for her actions.

 

And maybe it’s that amazement that leads her to slip a hand into Regina’s and tug her over to her, lacing her fingers through Regina’s as she waits for Regina to keep going. Regina sinks into the bed, finally meeting Emma’s eyes directly. Emma gazes at Regina, at the unfathomable depth in those dark, sorrowful eyes, and when Regina speaks again, she nearly jumps.

 

“I used to be different,” she says haltingly, her palm warm against Emma’s and her heart writing stories across her face. “Weak. Stupid. But different.” It’s the closest she’ll get to admitting that she was once the girl from Snow’s stories, and Emma aches at the loss on her face. “Magic was power. Magic saved me.”

 

“Magic corrupted you.” Emma regrets it as soon as she says it, but to her surprise, Regina smiles brokenly and raises an eyebrow with none of the usual sting.

 

“Now don’t you understand why I wouldn’t burden you with it?”

 

Emma’s too stunned to retort, too struck by this new, remorseful, bordering-on-humbled Regina who’s surrendered more of herself tonight than she can imagine Regina ever has before. “I need to speak with Henry now,” Regina decides, but it’s several more moments before she extricates herself from Emma’s grasp, and it’s with a quiet wonder that they both share. Regina has surprised herself tonight, too, it seems.

 

She’s at the door before Emma finally finds something to say, and she clambers out of the bed and clears her throat so Regina will turn and look at her. “So, uh… are you saying I’m weak and stupid?”

 

The smile curls up her lips before she can restrain it, and Regina laughs. It’s low and hoarse like she hasn’t laughed in years, and it’s beautiful. “Emma,” she says, and she’s walking back toward the bed until she’s standing directly in front of Emma again. “You are undoubtedly one of the most foolish people I’ve ever met.” She kisses her sweetly, and Emma has to remember how to make her heart beat again when it’s over.

 

She remembers doubting this whole…thing…they have, remembers being certain that a relationship as imbalanced as this one would never last or be anything other than Regina’s to own. She had been certain that Regina held all the power here, that Regina had no vulnerabilities to speak of and Emma was the one at risk.

 

But standing here, her hands comfortable on the queen’s hips as Regina’s head drops to rest against her shoulder, her eyes fluttering closed against Emma’s neck, Emma wonders if she might have been mistaken.


	13. Chapter 13

“It isn’t just Regina who the resistance targeted,” Emma persists, gulping down her ale as she leans in, her face earnest and determined. Regina had done something to her when she’d left for town and somehow she’s holding her liquor better because of it, focusing easily on the dwarf sitting opposite her.

 

Well, actually Regina had done a few somethings to her, and she’d looked displeased at Emma’s insistence that she wanted to visit the town again, but she hadn’t protested beyond weaving whatever charm had upped Emma’s resistance to the ale. Truthfully, Emma would have preferred to stay in the castle tonight too, but she can’t tell Regina _why_. Not on this mission.

 

“It was me. And Henry.” She flourishes her trump card, unlikely as it might be. “And it could have been Snow who’d been given that food, too, you know.”

 

Grumpy grunts behind his glass, one thick eyebrow raised. “Snow dines with the evil queen now? _You_ dine with her?”

 

One of the answers to those questions is laughable and the other is…probably unwise to reveal, so Emma heaves her shoulders in a shrug and clarifies not at all, “I don’t really get to dictate the queen’s whims.” It’s enough to make Grumpy’s wrist twitch ever-so-slightly, enough for ale to spill out of his glass onto the table. “But I don’t blame Regina for putting your friend and a little kid at risk this time,” she finishes. “I blame Rumpelstiltskin and the royals, and anyone else who helped them send that poison to castle.”

 

“As I remember, you were pretty helpful, too, Swan,” Grumpy points out, but now he’s frowning, guilt creasing his forehead and slumping his back.

 

She drums her fingers on the table, refusing to dwell on that unchangeable fact anymore than she already has. “I had no idea that Henry would be in danger. I thought only the queen was a target.” She can’t describe or think too much about her relief that Regina is still safe regardless and fights to keep it off her face as Grumpy eyes her speculatively.

 

“The queen does seem fond of you, though. As much as that heartless bitch could ever,” he amends.

 

Emma nearly chokes on her drink. “Wh-what?” Had Belle shared their conversation with the resistance? She hadn’t explicitly asked her to keep it quiet, but it had seemed a confidence and Emma hadn’t thought that anyone except maybe Rumpelstiltskin would be informed. She hadn’t revealed anything that Belle hadn’t already seemed to know, and definitely not enough for the townspeople to be waiting in the mines with pitchforks and poison for her.

 

If nothing else, it’d concern her if Rumpelstiltskin decides to use her closeness to the queen to turn her into his weapon. Because that-

 

She can’t be that person.

 

“I was here that day she retrieved you,” the dwarf says, breaking her out of her thoughts. “Like you were a _possession_ , like she owned you. I’ve seen her around her possessions before.”

 

Oh. Okay. This, at least, she can’t quite deny but she can counter. “I’m important to Henry. Henry’s important to her. That’s all.” Regina’s face comes to mind from the night before, after fragile peace had been established and she’d followed her to Henry’s room to watch from the doorway. Regina had taken Henry’s hands in her own and soothed his trembling and her own, and Henry had curled into his mother’s embrace, both of them content at last.

 

Two apologies in one night from a queen who’s never seemed capable, and Regina had been drained, returning to her room and reclining on a couch in silence. She hadn’t beckoned Emma along but Emma had followed anyway, caught in the other woman’s gravity field and both incapable of and unwilling to breaking free, taking a place on the floor beside the couch and leaning back in to Regina.

 

Nothing else had happened last night, and Emma had broken away before too long when reality had kicked in and the awareness of who Regina still was had been too much, but she knows she can’t put it this simply and be telling the whole truth. She isn’t a great liar, too focused on rooting out truth in others to find artifice in herself, and she can see Grumpy’s eyes narrowing behind his glass, struggling to read whatever’s written on her face.

 

In the end, though, it’s something else entirely that the dwarf zeroes in on. “Look,” he says, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “I’m sure the food wasn’t meant for the prince. We don’t do that kind of thing. It’s the queen we want gone, not her boy.”

 

And that’s as reassuring as Belle’s completely contradictory reaction had been unsettling. For all his talk and resentment, Grumpy doesn’t hate Henry, not in the way that he hates Regina. Henry is just a kid, and Grumpy isn’t a bad guy.

 

Most of the resistance isn’t, really. They’re desperate- desperate to be safe, away from Regina’s seat of power and back to the idyll that a fairy tale land must have been like before. And Rumpelstiltskin’s methods are their only hope right now.

 

They watch her with barely contained hostility as she exhorts them to listen later, and it’s only that awareness that keeps her going. “I know that Regina loves him, and that she’s taken away everything from you all,” she tries, making eye contact with Princess Abigail. She’s always seemed the most reasonable of the royals, but today she’s unimpressed, sharp-eyed and proud and unmoved. “But I love him too, and I can’t work with any of you if you’re going to hurt him. I’ll work against you,” she adds, and Abigail glances to the older royal who sits beside her. “I can’t let Henry suffer for his mother _or_ for all of you.”

 

King George barks out a laugh. “Are you _threatening_ us, little girl?”

 

Not for the first time, Emma really wishes she’d persuaded Regina to just teach her a little bit of magic. Maybe enough to do the whole choking thing that Darth Vader does to people who irritate him. That’d be nice. Still, her eyes are flinty hard and her thoughts only of Henry’s safety when she grits out, “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

 

There’s a low snicker from behind her, and she swings around- maybe a magical fireball too, just a little one to burst up from her hands when she’s threatened- but it’s only Rumpelstiltskin, inspecting his nails and laughing at them all. “Got a problem?” she says coolly, the adrenaline of defending Henry probably sending her to some pretty terrible life decisions.

 

“Oh, no, dearie, I wouldn’t imagine.” He smiles toothily, curling his fingers into his palm. “And who are we to question you?” He addresses the crowd with lazy certainty, letting his head loll about freely as they speak. “Our next attempt will target Regina alone, how about that? Our dead queen, and the little one free to be yours.”

 

She can’t control the shudder of revulsion that rocks her at his words, and Rumpelstiltskin’s eyes are glittering with mockery as he finishes, “That is what you want, is it not?”

 

She can feel the onset of a headache somewhere amidst all the nausea, Regina’s face swimming through her mind, and when she manages to excuse herself and leave, she can’t even look at the people she’s been fighting with.

 

She’s known that this moment would be coming, known that she’d have to make decisions soon in this impossible situation that she’s in, but now she’s on the edge of a precipice and to either side of her is a disastrous end.

 

Her headache intensifies as she struggles on home. She can’t do this anymore, can’t actively work toward the freedom of this town when it involves Regina’s death. Can’t avoid thoughts of how empty that feels, how Henry would cope- how she would. She’s been betrayed by people she’s…cared about so often that she’s been hardened by the world, changed into sharp edges and cold eyes and untouchable by most; and for all Regina’s similar hardness, she thinks she can still find some gentleness there, some of that last naiveté of a girl who wanted to be loved and still secretly believes she might be.

 

Why else would she seek out a son, someone she loves with all the intensity of the last two people on Earth? And why else has she given up so much of herself to Emma, unbidden?

 

Emma shivers, rubbing her temples as she walks. She won’t help hurt Regina anymore. She can’t.

 

But to acknowledge that in full, to separate herself from freedom fighters and attach herself to a tyrant instead is to allow whatever her connection is with Regina far more power than she’s ever meant to give it. She isn’t some kind of hero, fighting valiantly for the people of a town she barely knows, but she also can’t sit by and turn a blind eye to the kind of atrocities that Regina’s been responsible for just because there’s some sort of emotional connection between them.

 

She doesn’t think she can sit by and turn a blind eye to Regina’s execution, either, and that’s why the pain in her head is building to new proportions as she mulls over an impossible situation.

 

Well, that, and it’s starting to feel like a hangover she might have deserved after all the ale she’d consumed earlier.

 

_Wait a minute…_

 

She swears so loudly that a few birds fly off into the underbrush. “Regina, you sick, evil, woman.” That charm. The charm that was supposed to help her _resistance_ to the fairy dust.

 

Her head is pounding by the time she makes it back to the castle, and she swears that when she shakes it she can feel her brains rattling inside, struggling to break free of the hellhole they’ve been trapped in. She doesn’t even try to climb all the way to her room, not when Regina is closer and she _did_ something with that charm, Emma knows it, and she’s really going to yell at her as soon as she pushes open the door and storms forward-

 

-And lands spread-eagled on Regina’s bed, unable to muster up enough energy to sit. She squashes her head into the mattress, scrunching up her face and hoping the pressure will somehow massage out the cacophony in her brain as a dry voice comments, “Really, Miss Swan, there’s no need to be quite so dramatic about finding reasons to come to my bed.”

 

“What the hell did you do to me?” She tries to lift herself enough to face the queen behind her, but she only succeeds in freeing one eye from the mattress and sending a sharp pain straight to her temples.

 

She can nearly sense the eyeroll from Regina. “I did exactly what I said I would. You aren’t drunk, are you?”

 

“Is this supposed to be a normal hangover?” Emma demands. “I haven’t had it this bad since, well…“ Since a year after she’d stumbled out of prison and let herself think about the kid she’d given up for a three-day bender, but here doesn’t seem like a good place to bring that up. “You did something!”

 

“I counteracted the fairy dust in your ale,” Regina says coolly, but she comes over to sit down on the bed, her fingers tangling and stroking their way through Emma’s hair with softness that intimates some tiny note of compassion from the woman who is, most certainly, an evil queen at the moment. And the worst part is that it stillfeels kind of nice, _damn woman_. “The fairy dust would normally mitigate its own aftereffects as well, I suppose.”

 

Emma groans, in too much pain to summon up her well-deserved outrage at that revelation. “Make it stop.”

 

Regina’s hand doesn’t cease its movements, but she still catches the shell of Emma’s ear and squeezes it between her thumb and forefinger until Emma cries out. “How will you learn then?” Her voice is reproving, but Emma can hear the hint of amusement just beneath the surface, that _utter asshole_. “You’ve been drinking too much. I won’t have it anymore. It’s foul and pedestrian and you’re better than that.”

 

“You’re foul and pedestrian,” Emma mumbles into the mattress, but the pain is receding even as Regina massages the sides of her head, fading into nothingness with every magical touch. She’s finally recovered enough to turn to face Regina and scowl at her, but Regina laughs softly, almost surprised. “What?”

 

The other woman shakes her head, swift to return to a straight face. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” Her thumb dips to run along the wisps of hair that escape the curls at the side of Emma’s face. “Just…you and Henry have the same face when you’re sulking.”

 

“I’m not sulking!” Emma protests, but Regina is already bending to brush her lips against Emma’s, and Emma pulls her down beside her, flipping their positions before Regina whispers in her ear, “I know what you did today.”

 

She freezes, her stomach twisting itself into a knot. “You what?”

 

“I saw you.” She waves toward her vanity, at the mirror attached to the wall above it, and Emma remembers a detail of the old Snow White movie that she really couldn’t have afforded to forget. The mirror clears, a face materializing in the dimness to gaze out at them.

 

Emma pulls away from Regina, suddenly self-conscious and very afraid. “You were spying on me?”

 

“Checking on you,” the queen says tartly, sliding an arm under Emma’s waist and pulling her against her. The face stares silently, the eyes shifting to follow them. “I can’t have you die out of some magnificent stupidity on my watch. Henry would never forgive me.” Because of Henry. Right. Her fingers dip under Emma’s tunic. “I saw you talking to the dwarf.” _Oh._ Emma relaxes, burrowing up against Regina as the queen speaks. “You really think that he was involved? He’s one of Snow’s and she-“ She pauses, and Emma could swear it’s because she’s forgotten to lace her voice with the proper Snow-related disdain. “She’d never let her people put innocents in danger.”

 

“I don’t think that,” Emma says quickly, feeling guilty about it. Still, though, Grumpy’s probably less responsible than she is in this case, and he doesn’t deserve to be turned to stone or lose his heart or worse. “He just knows people who know people and can get a message out.”

 

Regina is playing with her hair again, winding it between her fingers and smoothing it down with the pad of her thumb. “I can protect you and Henry. You don’t need to engage with the idiots in the village. They won’t stop, and certainly not because you asked nicely.” She laughs, and it’s haughty and bitter and lost. “If not for the wards around the castle, Rumpelstiltskin would have taken Henry from me long ago.”

 

Emma shudders at the thought, and Regina’s grip tightens around her waist.

 

It’s possible that she’s kind of snuggling up with the evil queen right now, she notices, and shoves _that_ observation from her mind as it comes.

 

\--

 

She’s back in Regina’s bed that night and the next few that follow, and neither of them question it very much. It’s…comfortable. Regina is all biting sarcasm and standoffishness and obnoxiously possessive, but she’s also a closet cuddler and has a secret stash of actually functional clothing and her face lights up when she makes Emma laugh.

 

Her fierce protectiveness of Henry has expanded now to include the Emma-and-Henry unit, and she spends less time alone in the castle with nothing but her magic and more and more time with them, making snide remarks at Snow’s horsemanship skills and dueling with Emma while Henry fences with his teacher and quizzing Henry on his lessons before Snow can finish teaching them.

 

It should be tense, but it feels _natural_ , easy and domestic and kind of fun. “Regina never had this kind of childhood,” Snow tells her as they sit together by the library windows, watching Henry show Regina how to play Pac-man on his computer. She’s gritting out threats at one of the ghosts as the familiar Pac-man death noise sounds, and Henry is laughing at her and trying to reclaim the computer before she smashes the computer with the same kind of furious fervor she usually finds before she turns someone to stone. “Her mother was pretty terrifying. I doubt she was ever given much freedom beyond the riding.” And riding, Emma knows, is the one activity she doesn’t join them in. She’s seen Regina watching from a distance but the queen hasn’t ventured back to the stables since the incident with Daniel.

 

She does seem to trail along on almost everything else- well, it’s disingenuous to call it trailing along when she sweeps in and takes charge without batting an eyelash, ordering servants around and ignoring Snow conspicuously. Snow has gotten bolder around Regina and Regina has grown more tolerant, if tolerant means rolling her eyes and taunting her former rival instead of throwing her across rooms with magic and turning the people around her into stone.

 

It’s a fragile kind of progress, but it’s still progress, and Emma’s alternately glad that Henry’s mother is becoming a little less terrifying and uncomfortable for the same reason.

 

She’s glad for Henry, she tells herself, and not for the woman whose smile still blinds her when it emerges. _Tyrant_. The evil queen, not just some woman, and she struggles to remember that whenever she can.

 

Regina, whom she can already take down with a sword and who gets huffy about it (while Snow beams, making no secret of how pleased she is at Emma’s victories) and then yanks Emma out of the room and makes her scream.

 

Regina, who never looks more outraged than when Emma steals food right off her plate and winks at Henry, just to see how far she can test the queen, until one day regal, composed Regina tosses her roll at Emma’s nose.

 

Regina, whom Henry now watches with concern and fascination as she smiles around the breakfast table and her attacks on Emma have lost her bite, who flushes more than she should when Emma pats her on the rear as when she walks past her into the hall.

 

Regina, who reads books to Henry before bed and refuses to act out the characters’ voices until Emma leaves the room, and Emma can hear her atrocious accents and exaggerated evil undertones from just outside Henry’s door.

 

Regina, who tips her chin up when she comes, baring her throat and her heart as she shakes in Emma’s grasp, and shuts her eyes and parts her mouth only slightly and whispers Emma’s name like it’s a prayer.

 

This Regina is the Regina who’d ordered Snow’s death, who’d turned her husband to stone and trapped a kingdom in time out of selfish vengeance. This Regina is the one who’d plucked out the Huntsman’s heart and turned him to stone for kissing Emma and imprisoned Belle and had probably hurt thousands of others. She’s a fairy tale villain, and they’re supposed to be a special brand of evil that knows no boundaries and doesn’t end until they’re cooking in an oven or hanging on a gallows.

 

They’re not supposed to be _complicated_ , and they’re definitely not supposed to mellow out and love their sons and maybe care about their lovers, just a little bit. And Emma wants to hate- wants to hate herself, for falling into this relationship with an awful woman she’s agreed to help eliminate and who’s destroyed the lives of so many good people- and she wants to hate Regina, for being who she was. For being who she is, infinitely more complex than she’d dreamed the day Henry had brought her here.

 

And as much as she tries, she can’t quite muster that hate in earnest.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter, with extra thanks to Maia for her wonderful encouragement and feedback that's been super helpful in fleshing out some of the shaky later chapters of this fic! I posted another chapter on Friday, so be sure you didn't miss it before you read this one. (:

The carriage rocks from side to side as the horses carry it down a thin dirt path that crosses through the woods right where Emma had first driven into Storybrooke, and Henry’s looking as nauseated as his mother by the end of the ride, clutching on to the side of his seat as he peers out the window. “How much more time is this going to take?” he whines.

 

Regina shoots him a quelling eyebrow. “As I said previously, this trip is primarily about surveying the kingdom. When I am finished, then we can discuss other plans.” It’s her last holdout against Emma’s persuasion, and they all know it.

 

Emma had been encouraged by Grumpy’s uncertainty regarding Henry’s tyranny, and the obvious answer to the villagers’ hate had been to introduce Henry to them, to let them see for themselves that he could someday be a king they’d tolerate far more than his mother. It has the added bonus of giving Henry time with his peers and outside the stifling castle, and Emma isn’t entirely averse to the idea of getting some fresh air for a day that doesn’t end in the mines with a bunch of unreceptive royals. Regina had refused outright.

 

And maybe she’s right, maybe placing Henry in a position where he’ll be surrounded by enemies who’d think nothing of killing him is a bad idea, but they’re traveling with two carriages of guards today and Regina herself. Emma can’t imagine that any villager who values his life would try to assassinate Henry under Regina’s eagle eye, and she knows that keeping Henry from all this will only exacerbate an already hostile situation. And as long as no one is turned to stone or thrown into the dungeons by the end of today, Emma’s confident it’ll be a pretty good publicity move.

 

Still, though, they’d fought back and forth about it for days and _that_ had been a nightmare, Regina threatening to lock her back in her room more than once if she didn’t stop “taking liberties with her son” and actually slashing her arm with a sword during one heated fencing session. (She hadn’t _retaliated_ , per se, when she’d tried using magic in response and nearly set Regina on fire, but if she had it would’ve been totally justified, okay?) It had taken that injury and Henry’s outrage to finally calm them both, and only once Henry had informed them that he wanted to do it, and didn’t his mother trust him to be a noble and true prince?, did Regina relent to taking him out with the possibility of a visit to the village.

 

Henry had been overjoyed, Emma optimistic, and Regina tense and so unhappy that she won’t even make eye contact with Emma on their trip today. Emma is delicately keeping quiet, leaving the chatter to Henry as he exclaims on familiar landmarks and the occasional magical creature that vanishes into the trees as they stride past.

 

“Look over there!” Henry says suddenly, tugging her arm so she can peer out at the water beside them. “See that? That’s the troll bridge where Snow and her prince first met!”

 

“Trolls?” She squints out at the shadowed area under the bridge. “No, wait, Henry. That’s not a troll, it’s one of my ex-boyfriends.” Regina lets out a laugh in a whoosh of breath that she covers up by glaring extra hard at Emma, who winks right back at her, unintimidated.

 

Henry gives her a look, the familiar one he’s been giving her lately that says _you and my mom are getting along and it’s making me very concerned about your good guy credentials_ and she squirms, falling silent again and keeping an eye on Regina. They’ve reached a fork in the road that has a trap with a deer in it hanging from a tree at the center and that she’s certain they’ve passed three times already in Regina’s very thorough surveillance.

 

Finally, Regina sighs heavily and says, “Well, I suppose it’s time to take a look at the village,” and the driver lets out a shout and all three carriages turn to the right and drive on.

 

It’s only then that Henry tenses, fear that has nothing to do with his safety written all over his face, and Emma recognizes _that_ face from a dozen first days at a new school. She slides her hand over to squeeze his, and he squeezes back, staring out the window at nothing at all. “You’re going to have a great time, Henry.”

 

“This is a terrible idea,” Regina grumbles, staring out the window rather than making eye contact with either of them. She sighs. “Well, then, I suppose we can stop here.”

 

 _Here_ is just outside yet another body of water, this one within a hundred feet from the village and full of kids. Kids laughing, dunking into the lake and throwing each other inside. Kids on the bank beside it, fighting with branches and climbing into trees, kids chasing each other in winding paths around the trees and the water.

 

Kids who fall silent when the carriages halt beside the lake and the guards emerge, standing at attention outside the center carriage while Henry stares out at them through the door to it. They follow his descent with untrusting eyes, and Emma bites her lip as Regina follows him out, glaring at them all equally suspiciously. It’s like walking around with a team of cops waiting to arrest anyone who blinks wrong, and Emma knows from experience that no one’s going to be having any fun like this. Persuading Regina of that fact will be a whole different matter, though, judging from the queen’s stiff posture and flashing eyes. Henry seems reassured by his mother’s presence, though, hesitating at her side before he moves forward.

 

“Um…are you fencing?” he tries timidly, approaching the closest boy wielding a sharpened stick.

 

The boy stares at him, then back at his friends, and then he deliberately walks along the bank until he’s far from Henry, his friends trailing at his heels.

 

Henry stares at his feet. Regina is livid, fireballs half-emerging from her fists before Emma catches sight of them and ducks out of the carriage, grabbing the queen by the wrist before the village is reduced to rubble. “Regina, hey! Relax!”

 

“No one insults my son like that!” Regina grits out, the flames in her hands getting worryingly warm against Emma’s arm.

 

Emma tightens her grip, wincing at the abject terror on the faces of the kids who’d followed the first kid off. The latter boy stands unafraid, his branch high and defiant in his hands, and Emma gives him a dirty look, irritated and maybe a little impressed. “Yeah, well, what are you expecting from these kids? You’ve got a dozen armed guards in the middle of their park, and the evil queen herself is trying to make them make nice with her son!”

 

“Don’t call me that,” Regina growls. “You have a better idea, Miss Swan?” Her voice is like ice, but her hands have cooled as well, Emma notices with some relief.

 

She shrugs. “Send the guards back inside. Leave one,” she adds quickly, remembering that Henry is most definitely in _some_ danger here, regardless of Rumpelstiltskin’s assurances at the last meeting she’d attended. “But the guards and the carriages have to go or these kids are never going to get any closer to Henry.”

 

Regina stares at her, and she squeezes her arm, reassuring. “And _we_ are going to go for a little walk, just over there.” She waves her hand over to a spot across the road, still in clear view of the lake. She softens her voice. “Give Henry a chance to win them over. You can’t force love,” she murmurs, and feels Regina’s muscles relax in her grip.

 

The queen doesn’t say anything, just nods to her guards and follows Emma, and the carriages are gone before they make it to a nicely shaded spot. “I don’t like that boy,” she says finally, standing beside the tree like a sentry.

 

Emma tugs her down beside her. “Come on, he’s just nervous. Henry’s going to be fine.” The young prince has settled down on a rock beside the water, making eye contact with no one and drawing faces in the dirt.

 

“His name is Hansel.” Regina leans back against the tree, her eyes never leaving Henry. “His sister attempted to seduce and harm Henry last year.”

 

Gretel. Right. “What’d you do to her?” It’s not curiosity or accusation anymore, just the weariness of knowledge that Regina has done something else awful to someone who probably deserved better. She can’t muster up outrage as easily anymore, and it feels more like surrender than she’s comfortable with, truth be told.

 

“I banished her.” Regina gestures somewhere toward the troll bridge where they’d come from. “I set up an enchantment that will never allow her to return to her family. Others can cross the border of her home to bring her food or company, but her brother and father can never reach her again.”

 

It’s a cruel punishment, if not nearly as bad as Emma would have imagined for someone who’d hurt Henry. Regina goes soft on kids, she thinks, and wonders if those fireballs would have even been thrown if she hadn’t been there to stop the queen.

 

 _No._ Underestimating the lengths Regina might go to can’t be a good idea, even when she’s soft and quiet beside Emma and watching her son with eyes that can’t guard her love and protectiveness.

 

Henry is still sitting alone on the rock, but the other kids are starting to play around him, returning to their old spots and talking and laughing again. “Soon,” Emma murmurs, and she feels a wave of sympathy for their son. She remembers too many schoolyards where she’d been in the same position, watching the other kids playing ball or sharing snacks and ignoring the little girl with too-large clothes and sullen resentment on her face. Of course, she hadn’t had Henry’s princely disposition either, and she’d taken to picking fights instead of making friends. She’d come back from school to the home of the month most days with _nearly_ as many scrapes and bruises, she’d noted proudly, as her adversary had earned.

 

She tells as much to Regina when the other woman is tensing up again, and she’s surprised to see Regina’s face darken at that nearly as much as it had at Henry’s snub earlier. “Children can be cruel,” she says, running her thumb against Emma’s hip absentmindedly.

 

“You have many friends growing up?”

 

In the Emma/Henry/Regina triad of social failure, it seems least likely that Regina would be the one with the healthy past, and she isn’t surprised when Regina shakes her head. “They were all too terrified of my mother to approach me, and I was equally terrified to do the same.” She laughs, and it isn’t pleasant. “I suppose Henry has inherited that legacy as well.”

 

Emma pokes her. “Oh, please. You, terrifying? You’re like a vicious kitten who occasionally snatches people’s hearts and dooms them to your eternal rule.” Which might be a new level in her audacity toward said vicious lady, but she’s survived nearly being burned today and she’s feeling bold.

 

Regina turns away from Henry for the first time to squint at Emma. “Did you just call me a vicious kitten?” She _is_ looking fairly kittenish today, all curled up in the grass with wide, dark eyes and bewilderment on her face that might’ve been bordering on adorable on a lesser woman.

 

“Maybe a lion cub,” Emma concedes. “But not a very terrifying one.”

 

“You don’t think I’m terrifying?” There _is_ something terrifying in Regina’s face as she asks that, but that’s more in suggestive mischief that they might be engaging in some very twisted play within Henry’s earshot and less a threat on Emma’s life. It’s been a long time since she’s been genuinely afraid that Regina might hurt her, and she’s startled to discover that she might just trust Regina wholly now.

 

She might not trust her to make good decisions or to make things less difficult around the castle, but she does trust her with her life and Henry’s, and it’s reassuring and nerve-wracking to come to terms with that. She exhales, struggling to find a response that’s as irreverent as it is dismissive, and instead slides down the trunk of the tree to rest her head on Regina’s lap.

 

Which is commentary enough on how frightening she finds Regina, and the other woman brushes a stray curl out of her face with surprising gentleness as she murmurs, “Look.”

 

Emma shifts to glance across the road. A girl a little younger than Henry has taken pity on him and swum over, talking quickly and smiling at something he’s said. He’s nervous, twisting his fingers in his lap, but as she continues talking, his eyes light up with interest and he’s suddenly jumping into the water behind her, soaking his clothes and following her as she leads him along the shallow end of the lake to a spot on the other side. There’s already a gathering there, exclaiming at whatever they’ve found, and none of them seem to notice or care very much that they’ve been joined by the prince.

 

“Jefferson’s daughter,” Regina says darkly. “I suppose he’s found her again now that they’re all in the one village.” She shakes her head. “I don’t trust her.”

 

Emma’s fairly certain that Jefferson wouldn’t think twice about shoving Henry underwater until he couldn’t breath or fight back, but she thinks she’s a pretty good judge of character and Grace seems to have handled a sociopathic parent as well as Henry himself has. Henry’s telling her something now, pointing toward what looks like it’s…a starfish, maybe? and the rest of the crowd has fallen silent, listening to what he’s telling them. Even Hansel’s crew has paused what they’re doing to listen to Henry, though Hansel himself determinedly sharpens his branch against a tree trunk and stares anywhere but at Henry.

 

“What did I tell you?” Emma murmurs, and now the group is dissipating as Henry’s explanation winds down, but Henry’s being swept away with a crowd of kids who are climbing up a tree and jumping into the water. He’s soaked and his teeth are chattering and he’ll probably be catching a cold, but Emma doesn’t think she’s ever seen him smile this wide before.

 

Regina doesn’t say anything. The hand still stroking her cheek trails a path across Emma’s lips this time, and it’s as evocative as any kiss.

 

\--

 

They finally tear Henry away when the sun is starting to retreat behind the trees and several concerned parents have reclaimed their children, but Henry’s still beaming as he bids goodbye to his new friends and climbs into the carriage. “I told them everything I learned about starfish when Snow and I watched that video series on ocean creatures and then Colin and Aria wanted to know about movies and then they showed me how to find beetles in tree sap and Grace says that she has a rabbit that eats beetles!” He pauses for a moment to sneeze, and Regina fusses over him, charming his clothing dry and giving him her handkerchief before he can sit back down. “I want to go back, Mother. Can’t I go back tomorrow?”

 

“Maybe soon,” Regina allows, but she can’t hide her own pleased smile, and Emma’s emboldened enough by Henry’s success that she cuts in to suggest, “Hey, why don’t we grab something to eat at the tavern instead of doing dinner at home?”

 

Regina peers at her suspiciously, but Emma’s looking to Henry already, who’s thrilled by the idea of extending their day. “Three guards,” Regina says at last. “Inside the tavern with us.”

 

Her agenda in this day has only been about Henry making friends as a secondary goal, and about him becoming something more human and solid to the resistance as a primary one. And while she knows that having the village children come home and report about the kindhearted prince who’d played with them as an equal is going to earn him some points, it won’t be nearly as effective as them seeing him themselves, recognizing that this innocent little boy is the one who they would kill in cold blood.

 

And so they’re off to the tavern, and Henry seems oblivious to the jeers and whispers of the villagers who see them dismount and walk inside. Regina isn’t quite so forgiving, and it takes Emma’s arm bumping against hers before she can stop her fierce glower and continue toward the tavern with her head high. It’s all enough to firm up the walls that Henry’s joy had weakened earlier, and when Emma sneaks a peek at her companion, there’s tempered malice in Regina’s eyes.

 

The room falls silent the instant the queen enters, and Emma sees Grumpy and several other dwarves at one table jerk up and reach for their axes before they catch sight of her at Regina’s side. Red’s manning the counter, her eyes very wide, and she’s hurrying over to their table nearly before they’re seated.

 

“Hi!” Henry says. “You’re Red, right? Snow’s friend?”

 

“I-“ Her eyes dart to Regina and back, as though admitting to be a friend of Snow’s might get her killed (and maybe that’s a valid fear, Emma concedes, watching the dangerous smile on Regina’s face widen). “Um-“

 

“There a problem here?” And of _course_ it’s Grumpy, swaggering over to them like provoking queens is his specialty, a mug of ale half-full in his hand.

 

Regina stares at him like he’s a nasty looking fly. “Get out of here, you wretched little twit, before I decide that you’d make an apropos companion for Snow’s precious prince.”

 

“Right,” Grumpy says, more than a little plastered, and he walks out the door and promptly trips over the doorstep.

 

Red and Emma wince as one, but Regina smirks and returns her attention to their server. “Well? Didn’t my son ask you a question?”

 

“I-“ Red looks to Emma for support, and Emma shrugs, not entirely sure if Regina’s just toying with her or is feeling genuinely malevolent after their reception outside. “We knew each other, before.”

 

“She misses you a lot,” Henry says earnestly. “You should come by the castle sometime and visit. That’s okay, right, Mother?”

 

“It-“ Regina pauses, disconcerted by the invitation thrown out so freely after decades of keeping Snow in isolation. Emma has her suspicions about the extent of Red’s contact with Snow that she won’t share with either of her companions, but she raises an eyebrow anyway, impressed at Henry’s easy manipulation of his mother.

 

“Or maybe we could bring Snow next time we come here!” Henry amends. “She’s taught me lots about the animals in the forest and I bet she could show me more right here in town.” His voice is free of guile, but his lips are barely hiding his grin, and Emma’s suddenly not entirely sure that this outing has been her doing, after all. She may have severely underestimated the boy who’d so easily gotten her trapped in Storybrooke, Maine, come to think of it, and for all his well-meaning kindness, she’s not entirely sure that he isn’t also an evil mastermind.

 

“Per…haps?” Regina stutters out, looking as bowled over as Emma feels.

 

Red’s staring at them, her lips twitching with amusement at the queen brought to her knees by her ten-year-old son, and maybe that’s just enough for her to announce, “I’ll bring you our specialties,” and head back to the counter.

 

“That sounds pretty reasonable to me, too, kid,” Emma agrees, and Regina gathers enough of herself to aim a sharp kick at Emma’s knee.

 

Henry beams at them both. “Today is the best day ever,” he announces, and it’s enough to melt Regina all over again, putty in her very determined son’s hands.

 

Red returns with their food in record time, and it’s Emma who urges her to join them, after a quick wordless exchange with Henry. “Oh, I…I shouldn’t,” she says uncertainly, glancing at Regina for a moment.

 

“Really, are you going to offend Emma with rejection?” Regina drawls, and _yes_ , she’s enjoying Red’s squirming and not even attempting to conceal that fact! Emma tries to kick her back but her chair legs abruptly grow vines and tie her legs against them as Red shudders out a denial and sits beside her.

 

“Tell me about the village!” Henry says, and soon they’re all eating as Red fields Henry’s questions, her uneasiness fading as Regina gives up her agenda to prove how terrifying she can be and tastes the food instead, proclaiming it acceptable and mostly ignoring their guest. It feels more like a family meal than it’s ever felt in the castle, and Emma has to blink back the emotions that threaten to escape at that realization.

 

This is more than she signed up for when she’d gotten involved with Henry and Regina, and there’s a part of her that’s still desperate to run back to Boston and escape from what’s probably bound to be the most emotionally damaging relationship in her life- and she’s had a boyfriend put her in prison. But Henry’s grinning and Regina has vanished the vines and replaced them with a foot, sliding up her calf distractingly, and she’s not entirely sure that it isn’t too late for escape even now.

 

The tavern is filling with the customers who don’t turn around and make their escape upon seeing the queen in the room. One of the regular dwarves is serving drinks so Red won’t have to, and the company is watching them eat with brazen curiosity. Emma recognizes enough of them from the resistance to know that she’ll be tackling some difficult questions about her relationship with the queen at the next meeting she attends, but she can also see their eyes following Henry and she knows that not all of them will be so bloodthirsty next time, either. Even several royals are in attendance, and while she isn’t holding out for King George to suddenly find his repressed inner grandpa, Abigail nods to her once in quiet recognition and her escort actually grins.

 

“That was very adequate, Red,” Regina pronounces when they’re finished, and she leaves several gold coins on the table as Henry hugs the girl goodbye. Red blinks, flustered, and Regina brushes past her, stalking toward the exit with dangerous grace that shifts chairs out of her way and draws all eyes to their little party.

 

It’s only once they’re home and Henry is off to the library to find Snow and report on his day that Regina settles a hand on Emma’s back and murmurs, “Thank you.” They’re still standing outside and the light is too dim to see her face. “I haven’t seen Henry this happy in a long time,” she says, and there’s just as much self-recrimination in her voice as there is contentment.

 

“You know,” Emma says hesitantly, “You keep yourself and Henry so distant all the time, locked up in your castle far away from that.”

 

“I don’t have a choice, or have you forgotten that my kingdom hates me?”

 

“No, I just…” She leans in to kiss the corner of Regina’s mouth, for no reason other than that her lips are gleaming in the moonlight and her eyes are dark and solemn. “This is a life you could still have. If you weren’t the queen and he wasn’t the prince, you’d be living every day like Henry’s happiest day ever.”

 

Regina scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she sneers, pulling away from Emma to stalk into her castle, and Emma’s not sure if she’d imagined the quiet longing on Regina’s face.


	15. Chapter 15

Regina’s asleep beside her, head tucked against Emma’s side and an arm flung over her stomach as Emma combs her fingers through her hair, smoothing it out from the disarray she’d created earlier. They’re in Emma’s room for a change, having been distracted half through a midday clothing run and probably missing the bulk of the day with Henry and Snow.

 

Well, actually Henry had been talking about going riding this afternoon, so Regina had probably missed nothing but a few hours avoiding the stables, and Emma can’t say she’s sorry to have joined her. And she isn’t entirely sure that this hadn’t been intentional on Regina’s part, come to think of it. Why else had Regina joined her and then hurled her against her door with magic and attacked, if not to force company to a lonely day?

 

Which is completely unnecessary since Emma’s still not a fan of horses and horses are even less a fan of hers, and she would have played hooky in a moment if Regina had beckoned even less violently. She brushes an affectionate kiss to the top of Regina’s head, rolling her eyes at her own thoughts, and shifts when the queen rolls over nearly to the edge of her narrow bed, careful that neither of them fall to the ground.

 

When she peers out the window beside the bed, she can see Henry, a tiny figure below, his horse cantering out into the furthest fields around the castle as Snow watches from afar. She’s distracted by a few songbirds, one of whom is perched on her shoulder; and when Emma squints she can see the red-clad figure in the woods just beyond the castle grounds, out of Snow’s reach but not too far for the bird that returns to her.

 

Snow straightens, glancing at Henry before she raises her gaze up to the castle, and Emma ducks before her friend catches her state of undress and figures out exactly why she hasn’t met up with them today. It’s one thing for Snow to know that she’s sleeping with Regina, but it’s something entirely different to have her confronted with _visual evidence_ and Emma isn’t nearly as cruel or sadistic as the woman beside her might be.

 

As though roused by her thoughts, Regina shifts again and soon there are possessive arms sliding around Emma’s waist and lips pressed to the side of her neck, replaced impatiently by teeth nipping when Emma doesn’t react to the other woman’s presence. “Hi,” she says obligingly, tilting her head to give Regina more access.

 

“Watching our son?” Regina murmurs against her skin. “How is he riding today?”

 

“Better than I ever could,” Emma tucks her own arms under Regina’s, winding her fingers between the other woman’s.

 

Regina pounces, flipping them around onto the bed and they both tumble off as Emma twists in her arms, straddling her when they hit the floor. She smirks smugly at her lover and Regina exhales, “Well, I wouldn’t say _that_ ,” as she pulls Emma down for a kiss.

 

They barely make it downstairs in time for dinner, and Henry watches their descent together from his vantage point under Prince Charming’s statue with a considering eye.

 

\--

 

She’s worn out enough by then that dropping by Regina’s room isn’t her first consideration after Henry heads to bed, and instead she makes her way to the library, glancing through a book of what are undoubtedly spells. Regina isn’t going to teach her magic and she does understand why, but in this world where Rumpelstiltskin is leading a resistance against the Evil Queen from Snow White, she’d like to have a little more leverage than some basic sword fighting skills.

 

 _Magic_. It’s still a headache to think about, even now after months in a world she’s beginning to think of as home. Magic would have been nice when she’d been little and dreaming of superheroes and having the power to choose her own destiny. Magic would have made sense back then. But after twenty-eight years spent discovering that there’d been no magic in her life, no secret path to family and love and her childish dreams, it seems nearly unfair to find it now, shining its beacon through the grit of the real world that surrounds Storybrooke, Maine. To know that it’s been within her all along, and only Regina has drawn it forth.

 

When she stares down, the words on the page blurring under her unfocused eyes, she can almost feel it burning inside her, inviting release with her building frustration and bursting outward into something very nearly toxic. She coughs out the energy, a spark of _something_ , bright and surging and powerful, emerging from her palms and the book catches fire in her hands.

 

“Dammit!” She drops it, stomping on the white flames that are rippling across the pages with no success. “Water, water…” Too late, she remembers the glass that Henry had been drinking from earlier at the table by his computer, and she grabs it and upturns it over the book just as the flames meet at the center of the text and the whole thing crumbles into ash.

 

 _Crap_. There’s a congealed mess of water and ash absorbing into one of the library’s expensive-looking rugs, and Emma has no idea how she’s supposed to clean it without making her magic-induced mishap even worse. She scowls at her hands for a moment, considering whether it’d be worth it to try magic again, but _that_ would be stupider than even Regina would expect of her, and she finally settles on moving the chair she’d been sitting on to a spot covering the book’s remains. At least it’ll buy her some time.

 

“I can call someone to clean that up, Emma.”

 

Emma jumps, but the voice is gently amused and not irritated at all and thusly clearly not Regina. “Snow!”

 

Snow’s head is slightly tilted, her brow furrowed in bemusement. “What happened, anyway?”

 

Emma winces, twisting her hands against her waist. “I kind of have some magic. It isn’t working out very well.”

 

Snow’s eyes round and she stares at Emma, then drags her eyes down to where the carpet is still dark, poking out under Emma’s chair. “Is that…a _person_?”

 

Emma laughs, which is probably not a great idea considering how Snow is suddenly looking at her like she’s a moment away from stealing her heart. “What? No, don’t be ridiculous!” She sinks down into the chair, tucking a leg under her and waiting until Snow takes a seat opposite. “Just a book. I don’t think I’ve got the hang of magic just yet.”

 

“Does Regina know about you?” Snow’s hands are suddenly wrapped around hers and she’s inspecting her, eyes running over her face and arms and torso as though she’d be able to see Regina’s wrath displayed on Emma. “Has she tried hurting you?” She lowers her voice, her hands trembling, and Emma’s uncomfortable with the gesture but squeezes Snow’s fingers awkwardly anyway. “Has she tried _training_ you?”

 

Emma meets her gaze, half-upturning her lips into a smile that seems to calm Snow not at all. “No,” she repeats, lowering their joined hands to Snow’s lap before she reclaims her own. “Trust me, she’s just as worried about me turning into her as you are.”

 

“Oh. Oh.” Snow’s head jerks up and she stares at Emma, her eyes wide. “ _Really_?”

 

“Too much competition,” Emma says flippantly, shrugging it off. She had wondered that after Regina’s refusal and had continued to wonder it even after the queen’s admission, truth be told. There must be some part of Regina that would rather cling to magic and keep it as her own, and she can couch it in selfless reasons about protecting Emma from that corruption but Emma’s just cynical enough to look for underlying motivations.

 

But Snow’s shaking her head slowly, a knowing, sad smile on her face. “I don’t think so. I think…” Her voice trails off and she sits in silence, studying Emma’s face with eyes that are seeing something else entirely.

 

Emma squirms under her scrutiny, searching for something else to say to distract her friend. “I saw you got a message from Red today.”

 

Snow looks startled. “Oh! How did you-“ She stops, sheepish as she admits, “I did. She told me about your outing yesterday.”

 

“Yeah?” She wonders what it is that Red might have said, about how Regina baited her or how Henry is a good kid or how Emma had spent much too much time staring at Regina across the table. Hopefully not that last bit, though it’s probably a lost cause hiding the extent of their relationship from Snow.

 

Snow leans back, staring out of stained glass windows over Emma’s shoulder. “I think…I think I spent so long as a child, so long as an adult, struggling to find the person I knew Regina could be. And I failed every time. _She_ failed every time,” she corrects herself, frowning. “She didn’t want to see good in herself and I think she was terrified of facing it when vengeance was so much simpler. And now we’re here.” She waves her hand around, gesturing to their surroundings.

 

Her gaze turns back to Emma, thoughtful and a little wet. “And of course you’re the one to…to save her. I thought you might be-“ She cuts herself off. “You’re forcing Regina to be the person she was, to be _good_ , and I don’t know how much of her is left anymore.”

 

A weight settles over Emma’s heart, a heavy responsibility she’s never wanted that Snow is passing over so freely. “No. I’m not.” She can’t do that, she can’t be Regina’s conscience or her guide. She’s already too attached to someone who’s going to let her down. _She’s_ going to let Regina down, if the other woman depends on her. It can’t be about her. “That’s Henry, you know that. It’s all about-“

 

Snow’s hand is back on hers, firm and immovable. “Emma, how do you feel about Regina?”

 

She doesn’t respond, the weight on her heart growing heavier still. Snow doesn’t seem to expect any answer. “She isn’t what I’d want for you,” she says, and there’s pain in her voice, sorrow that she can’t quite hide from Emma. “Not in a thousand years. But I think you’re just what I would have wanted for her, once upon a time.”

 

“I’m working with the resistance,” Emma blurts out.

 

It isn’t what she’s meant to say, isn’t something she’s wanted to involve Snow in at all, but Snow’s blind faith in her- in her rightness for Regina, in how somehow she’s going to be good for Regina, in how she’s supposed to be the good guy- is enough to make her want to shake foundations, to admit just how much more complicated this relationship is than Regina being healed by some kind of loving faith. “The resistance that’s aiming to kill Regina. Rumpelstiltskin and Jefferson and the royals. And they’re probably right to try.”

 

She expects Snow to sigh and agree that it’s for the best, she expects Snow to reprove her for what will probably make Regina kill them all if she finds out, she expects Snow to tell her that she wants to help too. She doesn’t expect Snow to slump in her chair and ask her, “Has Regina told you why I’m the only one she trusts with Henry?”

 

“N-no?” She’s a little taken aback at the change of subject. “I try not to bring you up around Regina too much. She still gets that look in her eye like she’s considering the best way to flay someone alive.”

 

Snow laughs softly. “I’m familiar with it.” She sighs. “Henry changed things. Not just Regina, everyone. Time stood still until Henry. Every day had been the same, again and again and again for so many years that we all lost track of time. I’d been in prison.” She smiles wryly. “Regina had locked me up and come down a few times to gloat, but I proved a less than entertaining audience for her, I suppose. You can’t cry every day for twenty years, not even for lost love or evil’s reign. You learn to cope.” Emma winces, adding Snow’s life to the mental laundry list of reasons why Regina is terrible. It’s surprisingly unhelpful when she’s around the queen.

 

“And then this new element was introduced to the castle, this little boy Rumpelstiltskin had procured for Regina, and suddenly, time started creaking along then. For a long time, I’d thought it had just been because of someone different. Now I know better.”

 

“What do you mean?” Emma asks, but Snow waves away the question.

 

“The resistance formed around then, as people finally began to realize the extent of their exodus from our kingdom. It hadn’t been difficult to find people willing to revolt- I think it must have been the bulk of the kingdom by the end. They’d taken advantage of Regina’s distraction with her child to send in agents to the castle. A caretaker for Henry, a guard for my cell…” She shivers. “I was out before Henry’s first birthday.”

 

“I guess it didn’t last.”

 

Snow doesn’t look too sorry about it. “They’d kept me hidden underground, far from where Regina could find me, and that’s how I found out what their other goal had been- the one that hadn’t been shared with everyone, that was far less noble than freeing their rightful queen.”

 

And Emma knows where this is going, should have asked more questions about it all along, because the kid is out of his mother’s sight all the time and why would the resistance have waited until now to take advantage of that? “Henry.”

 

“Henry,” Snow agrees. “Regina was mad with worry and incapacitated by the threats they’d made to him if she left her castle. Guards combed the streets, but didn’t dare hurt anyone and set off Henry’s captors. And I found a tiny little boy beaten and half-starved and too terrified to cry locked in a room just down the hall from mine.”

 

“Oh, my god.” She’d given up Henry so he could have his best chance. So he could be loved and taken care of and _safe_ , safer than he’d ever be with her. And less than a year later, he’d been in dire straits and she’d never known. He’d been a baby, helpless, a victim for no reason other than his mother, and for a moment she hates Regina as much as she does the town, hates everyone here for taking a child who’d never done anything wrong and letting him suffer for their ends.  

 

She can’t breathe, she can’t cry, she can’t do anything but fight the urge to run to his bedroom immediately or choke out, “What did you do?”

 

Snow shrugs helplessly. “What else could I do? I wanted to be free, but not at this cost. Not when an innocent would suffer so much for it. I still remembered my own baby, how I’d had to surrender her and never knew how much she’d suffer-“ She’s crying now, tears spilling from her eyes and dripping onto Emma’s hand that she’s still clutching in her own. “I couldn’t do that to Henry. I couldn’t even do that to Regina, even though she’d taken my daughter from me.

 

“So I waited until nightfall, had Red come help me, and we freed Henry and brought him back. I didn’t let Red into the castle. I thought Regina would lock me up again, and I didn’t want to doom her to that too. I smuggled Henry into the castle and went up to Regina’s room and…” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “And Regina hugged me.” She grins through her tears. “She also told me she was going to kill me slowly and painfully for letting Henry get hurt, but she was too distracted by him to do much of anything to me.

 

“Next thing I knew, I’d been given a bedroom near his and been informed that I would be his fulltime tutor. The Huntsman and I were the only ones charged with his care, and we were never to leave him alone.”

 

Emma exhales. “Good.”

 

“She used to march me past Charming every day, to find reasons to get me into the main hall. Eventually, she must have realized that I was drawing strength from him instead of despairing, as she’d hoped, and after that she stopped tormenting me altogether.” Snow curls her hand around Emma’s. “And that was that.”

 

“And the resistance?” Had they really been trying and failing all this time? She can’t stop the relief that bubbles up at the idea that she might not have to work with them to hurt Regina after all. Maybe they really are all talk and a few botched attempts from time to time.

 

“They disbanded,” Snow says simply. “Regina executed the people who’d taken Henry and me and I think so many people were so ashamed of what had happened- that they’d done something so despicable that I couldn’t even stay with them- that most of the kingdom never tried organizing again. There’s been the odd attempt on the castle from time to time. You remember Gretel? But otherwise, there haven’t been any concerted resistance attempts since, from what I know.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what could have prompted them to begin forming again.”

 

Emma remembers Belle, remembers that she’d only been found a few months before Emma had arrived, and she thinks she knows what has motivated Rumpelstiltskin now to overthrow Regina. She fights a wave of nausea, remembering her last meeting with them, and how her plea for Henry’s safety had been received. These people had been the ones who’d gone after Henry to begin with, she’s certain, and they’re the ones she’s thrown in her lot with. “I can’t go back there,” she whispers, and is it that easy, to find another villain worse than Regina and choose to settle with the lesser evil? Is this how her conscience can be assuaged?

 

It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like compromising her values so she won’t have to face the idea of betraying Regina, so she can live in luxury with the happy family she’s been longing for her whole life. So she can stop thinking about overthrowing a queen she’s more than fond of. And it’s the fact that Regina is foremost in her mind alongside her concerns for Henry that only serves to make her excuses more transparent.

 

But Snow is shaking her head in disagreement. “No, I think you have to. You need to make sure that they never decide to hurt Henry again.” She studies Emma’s face, reading it as easily as a book. “I know you run the risk of hurting Regina in more than one way, but Henry has to come first.”

 

That isn’t a question. “Of course.” She will always put Henry first- always has, even when it meant giving him to someone else forever- and Regina can’t figure into that equation. And knowing what she does now about the resistance, she’s sure that Regina would make the same decision in her shoes.

 

Still, though, she can’t rid herself of thoughts of Regina. Regina alone in the castle, imprisoned by her terror for her son. Regina killing plenty of people in cold blood for what they might have done to Henry. Regina embracing Snow for bringing back her son.

 

Regina earlier that day, curled into her with a face at peace in slumber, free of the stresses and hatred that she bears like a burden across her visage each day.

 

She stays with Snow for a while longer before she excuses herself and hurries down the hall, pushing Regina’s door open and peeking inside. The queen is asleep on her bed, off to the left side with a space empty on the right half of the mattress. It’s where Emma normally sleeps, and she feels herself choke up at the sight of it.

 

She’s doing the right thing; she has to be, and she strips off her clothes and burrows under the covers beside Regina. The other woman turns toward her and Emma wraps trembling arms around her, and she’s warmer than the flames that lick at each other and shiver in the fireplace across the room. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some possibly triggery discussion of the Regina/Huntsman relationship in it near the end, so tread with care. And extra thanks to the invaluable Maia for her help there! <3

It isn’t until she walks into Regina’s closet one morning and tugs down one of her more functional vests from where it’s hanging that it occurs to her that she’s moved in with her girlfriend.

 

She’d been chagrined the first time her clothes had been washed by a maid and returned to Regina’s closet instead of her own, worried about what the people around them had known about the nature of their relationship and what they thought of her now. But she’s long since given up on trying to hide whatever’s between her and Regina- it’s been a moot point since Regina had started spending her days with Snow by choice, anyway, and she’s learned to ignore the suggestive leers on the faces of the castle guards when she’s alone. It’s more convenient to have her clothes handy in the room where she sleeps, and Emma’s room isn’t nearly as accommodating for two. She’d made one demand of Regina and Regina had rolled her eyes but covered her magic mirror with a cloth, and now there’s really no reason not to start her day and end her night in Regina’s room.

 

There’s also the added bonus that the resistance can’t send her messages in Regina’s room, though she doesn’t admit _that_ to herself. She’d gone to one meeting since she’d spoken to Snow, cognizant that this is her duty to protect the people she cares about. And she’d stood there and listened to them plot to kill her lover (today it’s with a spell that one of the townspeople swears can inflict pain from afar, and she’d worry if not for the way Rumpelstiltskin snickers when the royals get into it) and stared at Jefferson and Abigail and King George and wondered, _Which of you kidnapped my baby son_?

 

She knows she has to go back, that she can’t keep avoiding them forever, but it’s easier to forget them when she isn’t getting their messages, when her days are filled with Henry and Regina and Snow and nothing else. And the more she focuses on her outrage on Henry’s behalf, the less she has to admit that she’s just as uncomfortable with their plans to depose Regina, too. She’s reluctant to come to terms with the gnawing guilt that she might come to hurt a woman who certainly deserves to be ousted but doesn’t deserve betrayal and heartbreak, so instead she pushes thoughts of the resistance from her mind and throws all her energy into Henry and Regina.

 

Regina delights in referring to Henry as “our son” now, as though he’s a child they’ve borne together and raised together and who transforms their relationship from coincidental interconnectedness to family, and Emma can’t complain. It’s an illusion, maybe, but it’s one she’s longed for for too long to deny when it’s as close to ideal as she’s going to get in the center of an enchanted forest. She’s a little wistful for the normalcy of her own, pre-Regina dreams, of a little house somewhere in the suburbs with privacy and grade school for the kids and a girlfriend who isn’t occasionally homicidal.

 

If she had her way, they’d be packed and in the Bug within moments, heading far from magic and politics and a kingdom that hates them. They’d settle somewhere near Boston and Emma might find a job in law enforcement that wouldn’t take her across New England hunting bail jumpers and Regina would probably work in…well, politics, actually, or maybe she’d be a no-nonsense teacher for kids around Henry’s age who cares a little too much about her students and doesn’t let them dare to fail. Yeah. That would work. Snow could be queen, the village could expand, and if they come back to visit, there’d only be guarded looks and maybe eventual acceptance.

 

Maybe they’d never come back.

 

She sighs, slipping on the vest and cinching up her trousers. Dreams, that’s all they are. She’d thought she’d outgrown dreaming a long time ago, but there’s something about living in a fairy tale land that draws them out again, that has her staring into the future and seeing something more than what she has.

 

“You seem perturbed,” Regina observes from her vantage point on the couch. She’s already impeccably dressed, hair and clothes arranged perfectly thanks to her- unfair!- use of magic. Emma had complained about it once and Regina had responded by waving her hands and giving her an updo that had looked absolutely ridiculous on her and refused to remove it until she _ceased her whining_. Since then, though, Emma’s noticed when she wakes up that her hair untangles into the soft waves that she’d worn back before she’d first come to Storybrooke and had had the luxury of a curling iron. Magic, and Regina seems even more besotted with this effect than she is.

 

“Just thinking,” Emma says, turning to the door. “We’d better get down to breakfast before Henry makes it there.” They’re later and later each morning, and while they still haven’t had a talk with Henry about _them_ , as undefined a topic as that is, he’s prone to watching them carefully when he thinks no one’s watching. It’s Regina’s job to say something, Emma’s positive, because she’s the actual mom and Emma’s the new one. And Regina has never brought it up. So she waits, content to avoid that conversation too for as long as possible. Maybe it’s not as conventional to talk about your mother’s romantic life in the enchanted forest. Maybe they’re not going to have to discuss this at all.

 

So naturally, it comes as an unwelcome surprise when Henry blurts out over his eggs, “Have you had True Love’s Kiss yet?” He’s blushing furiously and staring at his plate and Emma nearly chokes on her juice.

 

“We… _What_?” She looks to Regina for guidance, but Regina is suddenly very interested on a painting hanging behind Emma’s seat, two high spots of color on her cheeks the only sign that she’s heard Henry. _Asshole_. She’s going to leave this to Emma. _Shameless asshole!_

 

Henry shrugs, still not looking up. “I just wanted to know. True Love’s Kiss is special, right? It can break-“ He swallows. “So have you?”

 

 _Oh_. Henry’s buying into the fantasy, too, the illusion of a happy ever after that Emma knows is so much further away than it seems. And she doesn’t want to destroy it for him, doesn’t want to force him to face the reality where his mother is the villain of the story and she’s just…Emma, but she can’t let him build it up to untenable proportions, either.

 

“Look, Henry…” She glances back to Regina, who’s stopped staring at the wall and is instead waiting expectantly for her response. “It’s not that simple. Relationships don’t always work like that.”

 

Henry frowns. “Aren’t you in love?”

 

This time it’s Regina who chokes, and Emma shoves her drink at her and gives her the stink eye, none too impressed by how the queen is handling the situation. “We’re…involved,” she says diplomatically.

 

“So you are in love.” It’s going to be more difficult to explain this to someone who’s grown up in fairytales, who’s never known of relationships that aren’t all love at first sight and happily ever after.

 

“I…um…” She kicks Regina under the table.

 

Regina raises an eyebrow. “Spit it out, Miss Swan.” There’s barely concealed amusement on her face, and _screw it_ she does not have the right to be laughing at Emma right now, not when she’s decided to play the coward in this little chat.

 

She sighs, surrendering any hope of sheltering Henry, and informs him, “Henry, this… _thing_ is about mutual attraction, nothing else. It’s not…it can’t be love.” She refuses to look at Regina when she says that, biting the inside of her lip so hard that she tastes blood.

 

Henry’s brow furrows. “Mutual attraction?”

 

Well, if she’s scarring him for life, she might as well go for broke. “Sometimes I want to jump your mom’s bones.” It might be worth it for the instant of satisfaction when the amusement vanishes from Regina’s face and is immediately replaced with horror. “Sometimes I want to strangle her,” she adds conversationally, smiling sweetly at the queen. “It’s kind of complicated.”

 

Henry might not know what jumping someone’s bones entails, but he seems to have caught the gist. “So…you’re just…having sex?” he tries, saying the words like they’re something he doesn’t quite understand.

 

“Exactly,” Emma agrees.

 

“How do you have sex?”

 

“Well-“

 

Finally, _finally_ , Regina cuts in. “I don’t think any of this is relevant to a ten-year-old boy, do you?” she grinds out, ice in her voice. “Henry, why don’t you go ahead to your lessons. Emma and I need to…talk.”

 

Henry sighs, pulling himself out of his seat and dragging his legs as he heads to the door. “You _act_ like you’re in love,” he mumbles grumpily, and for a moment that’s enough for Regina’s glare to waver.

 

The moment he’s gone, Emma finds herself pinned against the painting Regina had been admiring earlier, unable to move as the furious other woman stalks toward her. “What the hell was that?” Regina hisses.

 

“Well, you weren’t helping!” Emma snaps back. “I wasn’t told that I’m supposed to be the one to have these chats with our son now.”

 

“You told him we were sleeping together!” It’s a mark of how livid she is that Regina is standing practically on top of her and hasn’t touched her once, both of them caught up in righteous anger that has supplanted desire for the time being.

 

“What else could I do?” Emma demands. “Am I supposed to say we’re in love next time just so he won’t ask questions?”

 

“Yes!”

 

 _Oh._ They both fall silent, staring at each other, flushed and breathless and their ire draining out of the room. Regina exhales, a soft breath against her face, and murmurs, “That’s easier to explain, is it not?”

 

“Yeah,” Emma breathes. It escapes as barely a whisper, and there’s a frantic sort of heat rising within her when she thinks about it, calming only with her next words.  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

 

Usually, Regina tries to conquer her when they kiss, to dominate and overwhelm until it’s impossible for Emma to break free, and she’s always attributed it to old habits from a queen who’d ruled her subjects with an iron fist. Roughness and gentleness come hand-in-hand with Regina, and it’s as exhilarating as it is all-consuming

 

But now her hands are skimming against Regina’s and they’re rocking a little as she leans in for a kiss, soft and chaste and unhurried, only their lips and palms touching as they sway together. She pulls away a hair only so she can tilt her forehead against Regina’s, and they stand in silence for a few minutes before she ventures, “For Henry’s sake, right?”

 

“Of course,” Regina says haughtily, but her eyes are bright with something indefinable and Emma’s the first to pull away, moments later than she probably should.

 

\--

 

“It’s so _hideous_ ,” Regina complains, running her fingers over the fabric. “The color is too dim, the material is so rough…” She squeezes it in her hands and Emma shifts, putting a hand against the wall to support herself.

 

“Still, though, it does make my ass look pretty stellar, huh?” Regina snorts in distaste but she’s still got one hand on Emma’s jeans, her fingers drawn to the rear by a magnetic attraction that’s more than a little mutual.

 

Her hand creeps lower, sliding between Emma’s legs, and when she finds traction Emma presses another hand to the wall, her eyes falling closed as she shifts to give Regina more access.

 

She doesn’t remember how this particular outfit had made its way into Regina’s room, but Regina had found them under a pile of less anachronistic clothing and ordered her into them as she’d walked in. And she’s surprised to find that she misses them, jeans and tank tops and her old favorite jacket. They might not be sensible for fencing or riding a horse, but they’re _hers_ , and the last little thing she has left of a home that hadn’t really been a home at all.

 

Regina, meanwhile, clearly has less sentimental reasons for wanting to see her in them. “You know,” she hums, freeing Emma from her jeans with some swift maneuvering. “I do remember thinking that these were tasteless when I first saw them…but not unflattering.”

 

“You were…thinking about my clothes when you first saw me?” Emma pants. Regina had been wearing red, she remembers, tight and long and impossibly alluring from the start.

 

Regina twists her hand and Emma gasps at the pleasure that shoots through her. “They weren’t _foremost_ on my mind, but I can’t say I’ve had anyone dressed like you make it into my castle before now.”

 

“You tried to turn me into stone,” Emma accuses halfheartedly.

 

“Yes, well, I didn’t, did I?” They’re rocking back and forth now in a rhythm, Regina pressing forward as Emma sways against her and then back toward the wall. “I couldn’t even take your heart.” She laughs for a moment, soft and affectionate. “I thought you were working for Rumpel.”

 

Emma’s eyes are still closed, so when her breath catches, Regina attributes it to her ministrations and intensifies them. She moves her thumb over the same spot, faster and harder until Emma’s coming with a ragged gasp, her legs splaying out as she slides to the floor in an ungainly heap. Regina smirks down at her, but her eyes are still gentle as she watches her. “I still don’t know where your magic comes from, Emma.”

 

“Me neither,” Emma agrees, glad that they’re talking about something other than Rumpelstiltskin. “And that’s why you can’t take my heart?”

 

Regina drops to her knees, a hand sliding into Emma’s chest before Emma can protest, and there’s that tugging again, sending completely inappropriate desire straight to her core as she shudders and rides a crescendo that had only just been waning from before. “It seems not,” she whispers, wonder in her voice. “I don’t understand.”

 

Her hand is still loose around Emma’s heart, and she can feel the heaviness of it every time her heart beats. “Regina,” she says gently.

 

Regina slides her hand out with reluctance she doesn’t explain, and they sit side-by-side against the wall in companionable silence. “It’s never happened before,” she says finally.

 

“Did you take many hearts?” She doesn’t want to know, but she can’t shy away from the truth, not when it’s so present and painful and necessary to the world built on Regina’s crimes.

 

“Yes.” Regina’s voice is flat and emotionless, and only when Emma tilts her head to watch her lover does she see the way Regina holds herself rigid, the way she’s staring across the room with her lips set and her face dark. “I did.”

 

“What does it mean if you have someone’s heart?”

 

Regina’s fingers curl together. “You have control over them when you wish it. You can speak through them, act through them, use them for your purposes.”

 

It’s what she’d meant for Emma, what she’d done to enough other people who might have proven to be liabilities to be quantified as “many.” It’s what she’d done to the Huntsman, and he’d been turned to stone for daring to desire someone else.

 

A new, disturbing thought occurs to her, and she swallows and asks, “And when you had the Huntsman’s heart, he was in your bed.”

 

Regina’s words are strained. “Yes.”

 

“Did he have any choice in the matter?” She’s sick thinking about it, about the real world implications of a relationship where one party is so securely under the other’s thumb. She’s spent too much time used and abused by people who’d held her fate in their hands to make excuses now, when it’s easier to ignore.

 

Regina doesn’t respond.

 

“Did he have a choice?” Emma repeats, and her own heart is pounding so hard that Regina could probably have stolen it right then.

 

“He isn’t the first person to be taken by royalty to be used as they desire,” the queen says at last, and there’s a note of familiarity in her voice that has Emma blink and study her face again. “It’s a story told a thousand times in folklore.”

 

“The Huntsman was your revenge,” Emma guesses. Against men, against the people who’d loved Snow and hated her evil stepmother, against the world for stripping her of her agency. They’d both been thrust into cages by men, locked in prisons they hadn’t deserved; and Emma remembers the hopelessness, the desire to exact vengeance on the world. She’d responded by spending her life chasing down men like Henry’s father, liars and cowards who would put themselves before the people they claimed to care about. Regina had responded by dooming an innocent to the same life she’d suffered through. “It was all your revenge. Not just against Snow but against the whole kingdom for everything you’d suffered through.”

 

“No.” Regina clenches her fists. “Perhaps that was part of it. Perhaps it would be better if it was.” Her voice is shaky, and when she shifts away from Emma, Emma doesn’t follow. “But I was never…my life was never my own. I had been sold to a king and lost... lost everything in the process.” Her words emerge unsteadily, shuttered behind windows and peering through at last. “I wanted control. I wanted to dominate and I wanted to _rule_ , rule like I’d been ruled, and I don’t think I ever thought it possible for the people around me to not despise me as much as I despised myself.”

 

Emma opens her mouth, but Regina speaks before she can respond, every word enunciated with broken certainty. “I made my own choices at last and they were the only choices I’d known, prisoner or captor. And I surrounded myself with hatred because I was nothing without hate and disgust and my wrath.” She looks very small suddenly, without airs or regal bearing. Just Regina, wet-eyed and hoarse-voiced and alone. “I was nothing,” she repeats, and she’s so far away that Emma doesn’t dare venture to reach a queen wracked with regret and shame and bitterness.

 

She can’t forgive, she can’t ever say that it’s okay when it _isn’t_ and it can never be, not even if Snow’s beloved savior arrives and the Huntsman is himself once more. None of what Regina has done in the past is close to okay, and it’s a fulltime job just struggling to hold her accountable for it all.

 

But staring at the woman, a gulf apart from her and a few inches away- a woman hasn’t been her captor for months but holds her stationary regardless, a woman who Snow insists is finally recovering the shattered pieces of herself and pressing them back together into a jagged, chaotic mosaic, a woman who has altered herself by choice so deeply since they’d met that Emma then wouldn’t have recognized her now- Emma thinks it might be okay to say one thing, even if it’s only, “I don’t hate you.”

 

Regina laughs through the tears that are spilling down her face now, and how does she manage to convey so much condescension even as she’s falling apart? “You’re a fool not to.”

 

“Yeah.” And a tremor passes through the queen’s body as Emma speaks. “I know.” She doesn’t move any closer and Regina makes no motion to change that. But they fall to silence again, the steadily reforming queen and the woman who doesn’t hate her, eyes wide open and bright with tears.


	17. Chapter 17

They’ve built a house of cards since that night, a fragile peace in them both that carries over for days after. Emma struggles to be content for the first time since she’d found herself invested in Regina, certain at last that there’s genuine desire to change on the queen’s part and finally able to assuage her doubts. And Regina is more difficult to read than ever, quiet and introspective and shakier when they’re alone but with a warmth that eases Emma.

 

Still, though, there’s a cynicism of decades of disappointment that Emma can’t shake even when Regina’s wrapped in her arms, an awareness of _Regina will let you down in time_ that silences the blind optimism that struggles to emerge. There’s something about this place that feeds the part of her that she’d kept hidden for so long by necessity, that makes her believe in happy endings and people who can change and _magic_ , not the kind that’s all purple sparks and power but the kind that can thrust a lonely woman into a castle full of lonely people and bring them all together. And it’s more work than ever to warn herself that human nature is the same no matter which world she’s in, no matter how much she’s come to trust the people around her.

 

She remembers Tallahassee, remembers two years spent wandering a city that had been the source of more despair than anywhere else for her. Remembers what had drawn her to the place to begin with, remembers being seventeen and in love and believing in a future for the first time. Remembers how hard she’d fallen for that dream and how much it had injured to fall again, plummeting from hope to despair as prison bars and her own body had bound her.

 

She’s been resisting having wholehearted faith in Regina for so long, been seeking protection for her heart in the resistance’s plots and in the anger of the people and in the persistent logic in her own mind. She’s been so afraid.

 

And now that Regina’s voiced regrets, now that actions and words are piling up toward a someday redemption, Emma can feel the shuttered box that encases her heart slipping open, leaving her exposed and vulnerable and utterly terrified. She clings to her cynicism because experience has taught her that it will be right someday, and she doesn’t dare to acknowledge that she might believe otherwise now.

 

That she might believe in Regina.

 

\--

 

There are three guards today by Emma’s insistence, situated around the children’s lake and wary of danger, but the kids pay them no mind. These kids adapt better to new situations than their parents would, and though there are a few wary glances at Regina and Emma across the road, today Henry is accepted right back into their circles without any ceremony.

 

“I wonder if there’s some kind of organized schooling for these kids,” Emma says thoughtfully. “Some place Henry can go every day for a few hours to hang out with them that isn’t so…open.”

 

She glances around for what must be the fiftieth time today, and Regina presses her lips together in amusement. “You’re on edge today, Emma.”

 

Her first inclination is to lie, but she can’t think of a good reason why she should. “Snow told me about what…what happened when Henry was a baby.”

 

“Ah.” Regina straightens a bit, peering around in a perfect reproduction of Emma’s own motion. “Yes, that would do it.” She frowns. “What exactly did she tell you?”

 

And because there’s no sense in them both dwelling on the danger beyond reasonable caution, Emma smirks and says, “She says you hugged her.”

 

Regina blinks, startled, and visibly composes herself. “I am certain I did nothing of the sort,” she says haughtily. “Snow is living in a fantasy world, as always.”

 

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

 

A branch snaps off the tree above them with a puff of purple smoke and bounces down to the ground. “I really hate that woman,” Regina mutters.

 

“Mm-hm.” Emma reaches out to pick up the stick and poke Regina with it. It flares white-hot against her fingers in retaliation. “Ah!” She drops it and sticks her fingers in her mouth, sucking at the burn.

 

Regina takes Emma’s hand in hers, pressing the burnt fingertips to her lips and easing the pain. “Have you had enough?” she asks smugly.

 

Emma ignores her and turns her attention back to the branch, now lying harmlessly on the ground. She touches it with her other hand, willing it to be hot again, to catch fire like the spell book had in the library. But it remains cool to the touch, still and useless.

 

Regina’s fingers tighten around her hand. “It’s about emotion,” she murmurs, resignation in her tone. “You’re not going to be able to access magic without anger.”

 

“You do,” Emma points out, focusing on the branch anew. “Unless you really are just furious all the time.”

 

Sadness flits behind Regina’s eyes. “For a long time, I was.” She clears her throat. “I have never known someone who didn’t use rage and pain to find their magical center. Emma…”

 

“There has to be another way.” She struggles to recall how she’d been feeling the second time her magic had burst forth with abandon, remembers skin on skin and her legs tight around Regina and the intoxication of the fairy dust and Regina’s magic joining together to swell within her, bringing her to-

 

White fire swells at the end the branch and she falls back against Regina, gasping, the magic undulating from her chest outward to her hands, sparking all over her body in little pinpricks of pain.

 

And then there are hands massaging her temples and Regina’s voice, clear and strong through the fuzziness of pain and magic. “Focus, Emma,” she urges. “Direct your power. Concentrate.”

 

She shuts her eyes and at Regina’s coaxing, imagines the magic flowing through her, smooth and energizing instead of the mess of knots it feels like now, and she’s startled when it works. Her body is thrumming with power but it doesn’t hurt anymore, and when Regina says gently, “Now imagine the flames rising and falling,” she finds that she can with only a thought.

 

“Good. Good.” Regina’s arms are pressed against hers now, her hands loose around Emma’s wrists and her lips murmuring commands against Emma’s ear. “Now calm yourself. Let the magic settle down back where it came from.” She brushes a kiss against Emma’s neck and the flames shoot up for a moment before Emma exhales, relaxing as much as she can with Regina wrapped around her.

 

“I don’t want you to do that again,” Regina says with the command of royalty when Emma slumps in her arms.

 

“I know.” It’s not acquiescence and they both know it, and Regina stiffens against her.

 

It’s pointless anyway when her magic only seems to work around Regina, but Emma isn’t willing to make any promises regardless. She doesn’t want to live her life with this gift left untouched, nor does she want to find the rage that controlled Regina for so long. In this world, where people plot to kill the ones she cares about and where the ones she cares about might be their own worst enemies, being a decent shot isn’t going to protect anyone. And Emma _needs_ to protect them, more desperately than she needs to protect herself. She needs to know that they’re all safe, and if magic is power, then she’ll harness it for good.

 

“It isn’t just about anger,” Regina says finally. “When you have magic, when it consumes you completely-“ She pauses. “When you allow it to consume you,” she corrects. “Magic is a tool, not a malicious spirit.”

 

 _I wouldn’t allow it_ , Emma thinks, but that’s hubris, confidence that she hasn’t earned. Magic corrupts the purehearted, and she isn’t even that.

 

Regina leans back against their tree, bringing Emma with her. “I was empty,” she says. “I’d won. I had my kingdom back, I’d defeated all my rivals and subjugated them, I had Snow White in a prison and her prince in my hall, and do you know what I felt?”

 

“Nothing,” Emma says softly. Vengeance is empty, resentment even more so. And Regina had devoted herself so fully to it that she can’t imagine what else would have been left to her then.

 

“Nothing,” Regina agrees. “And that was intended to be my happy ending.”

 

Emma curls up against her so they’re sitting side by side and her head can rest against Regina’s shoulder. “Were you ever happy?”

 

“Henry makes me happy,” Regina says simply.

 

“And are you happy now?”

 

Their fingers touch and lock, tangling together unconsciously. “More than I’ve ever been,” Regina confesses, and she’s staring at Henry, splashing after Grace across the lake, as her hand tightens around Emma’s.

 

When she turns to Emma, it’s unexpected, as much so as the question that follows. Regina doesn’t make herself vulnerable, doesn’t offer herself up for disappointment, and Emma understands that better than anyone. It’s why they talk in histories and codes, Henry a smokescreen they gladly hide themselves behind. And she doesn’t imagine any more from Regina, not until the queen says, “Are you happy here? With Henry and…and me?”

 

The answer is easy, easier than it probably should be with betrayals still looming and her fears so strong, and she barely manages to keep herself from smiling blindingly and echoing Regina’s words. Barely, but she manages, and privately marvels at how emotionally contained she is, that the evil queen can surrender herself first.

 

She shrugs out a, “You’re all pretty okay,” with a smile that Regina reads with all the ease of someone who understands.

 

They’re kissing before either of them thinks about it very much, lips moving together and tongues exploring and each of them with a hand pressed to the other’s cheek, steadying each other and utterly, utterly lost. Emma’s throat closes up like it has every time they’ve kissed like this before, and she wonders why when she’s at her happiest, all she wants to do is cry.

 

\--

 

“Can I call you Mom?” Henry says, sipping on a cocoa drink that Red has ready for him this time. Word has spread that the queen is in town, and the tavern is packed with curious onlookers, people Emma’s never seen at Granny’s before, parents and fairies and a tiny cricket fluttering around and speaking in a helium-Disney voice. Grumpy is at his usual table, but today the woodsman is sitting beside him and the dwarf looks uneasy and tense.

 

“Wh-what?”

 

“Mom. Isn’t that what children say in the other realm?” Henry asks, eyes wide and free of duplicity. Which means, of course, that he’s up to something. “And you’re kind of my mother too, right?” He looks to his actual mother for support. “So shouldn’t I call Emma something else now?”

 

Regina steeples her fingers, mock thoughtful. “Yes, I do believe that would be best.”

 

Henry beams. “Good!” He nods to them both. “Mother, _Mom_.” The warmth in Emma’s chest that surges up at his words is matched only by her panic at the same. “I’m going to get more cocoa,” he says, and Regina’s hand is resting on Emma’s before he even clambers out of his seat to get Red.

 

“Emma,” she murmurs, and Emma inhales a shaky breath. “Stay with me.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Emma manages, and Regina’s thumb drags across her palm slower and slower until her heart is back to beating in time with it. “I’m just-“

 

She can’t explain to them why she’s so panicked, why this family terrifies more than any evil. Not to Regina or Henry, who’ve both been so eager, so hungry for this. She knows that Regina, at least, has been damaged before, has had hopes ground into the dirt and had her future realigned against her will. And yet she’s put her faith in Emma so completely, has trusted in a better future without reservation or hesitation, and Emma envies her her certainty.

 

Emma isn’t wired that way, can’t trust or love without the dread of eventual disillusionment, and maybe that’s why she’s still shaking, why her heart is pounding a staccato beat against her chest that even Regina can't soothe. _I agreed to work with a group that wants to take you away from me_ , she thinks, her eyes searching a face that’s all regal poise and that motherly compassion Regina does so well with the people she cares for. _There are people out there who want to kill you and I helped them_.

 

And Regina trusts her.

 

She hasn’t been back to the resistance since that sole meeting after she’d spoken to Snow. She doesn’t doubt her original decision, doesn’t doubt that Regina’s actions had called for dire measures. She doubts her decision to back away. She’s made the call with her heart, not her mind, and while it’s easy for Snow to tell her to stand with the people who’d hurt the ones she- she cares about, she doesn’t have it within her to cut herself off for the good of her mission. She isn’t Snow, she can’t send a baby away for the good of a people. She could barely give up Henry and that had been for _him_ , not her. And yet she’s been to too many meetings, been too helpful, done too much to aid the people who would kill Regina.

 

And Regina trusts her, and suddenly she glances back at Grumpy and then to Regina, realizing finally that it isn’t just Regina whose betrayal she fears.

 

It’s her own.

 

She finds it less and less likely every day that the resistance is an actual threat to the people sequestered safely in the castle, not when Regina is so aware of their every attack and deflects them so easily. No, the threat is Emma herself, who would shatter the peace with treachery that had been reasonable at the time but could cripple her lover now. And she’s been so focused on all the ways Regina might falter to focus on what could reel her most, could throw barricades up again and heat the warmth in her eyes to the murderous, irrational fire she remembers from her first days here.

 

She is the weapon Rumpelstiltskin would use while the rest of the resistance squabbles over laughable, trivial irritants.

 

“You okay?” Henry asks, cutting into her thoughts as they hollow her out. “Mom,” he adds, smiling at the sound of it.

 

“She is fine,” Regina assures them both, and Emma manages a grin for their son.

 

“Oh, good.” Henry has something sticky and sweet in his hands, and Emma tenses until she sees Regina’s guarded nod. Nothing toxic in Red’s food, which is a relief as the girl in question follows Henry to the table with only one uncertain glance at Regina. “I was thinking about how you said Snow could come with us to town sometime.”

 

“I said _perhaps_ ,” Regina corrects, but now Red’s sitting down next to Henry, co-conspirators unafraid of their queen.

 

“It’d be great for morale,” she pipes up. “Seeing Snow free to move around and close to Henry.”

 

Emma smirks into her bread. The panic is subsiding now that Regina’s and Henry’s attention is elsewhere, and she has the presence of mind to cut in before Red enrages the queen a bit too much. “Snow’s support would be better for Henry’s future reign than anything else we’ve done,” she agrees.

 

Regina scowls. “And how would we ascertain Snow’s loyalty when surrounded by her former constituents? How could you possibly know that she would-”

 

“She _would_ ,” Henry and Emma chorus, their eyes widening earnestly at the same instant, and Regina’s own eyes soften as they do whenever she’s reminded that the two of them share blood. “She wouldn’t go back on her word if she promised,” Henry adds.

 

Regina makes a scoffing noise in the back of her throat. “You have a very different experience of Snow White than I.”

 

Red is beginning to look concerned, wary eyes darting from Regina to the relative safety of her counter, and Emma decides it’s time for extreme measures. “Regina,” she wheedles, winding her fingers between the queen’s. “It wouldn’t do any harm, and it would make Henry and me really happy. Besides-“ She leans in, murmuring some choice words into Regina’s ear.

 

High spots of color darken Regina’s cheeks, and she pauses to take a few breaths before she says, “I’ll consider it. _Carefully_ ,” she adds when Henry opens his mouth to protest.

 

“We appreciate that.” Emma kisses her on the cheek and winks at Red. Behind her, Grumpy is staring at them, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

 

\--

 

Regina and Henry head out to the reflecting pool just outside the castle when they get home, Henry eager to teach his mother the names of the constellations he’s been learning about with Snow. Emma excuses herself to the castle, promising to join them later.

 

For now, she descends to the dungeons, keeping to the shadows and slipping past the guards, more alert than ever to the possibility of being found and her house of cards folding to the ground.

 

She stands outside Belle’s room, a hand against the door, running through insufficient words in her mind. How is she supposed to tell one of Regina’s victims- one of her _current_ victims, like the people in the hall or the Huntsman or Hansel and Gretel’s family- that she’s given up on their cause? That she’d rather let them continue to suffer than bring Regina suffering? They have no reason to believe that Regina might be changing, that tyranny could fade into benevolence given a little more time. And she isn’t so tactless to shrug off their cravings for vengeance because she puts Regina first.

 

It’s selfish. It’s selfish no matter what. Someone will get hurt because of Emma, someone who won’t deserve it. She can’t just weigh sins with her hands and choose a victim and a punishment, not when it’s so much more complicated than good versus evil and dark versus light.

 

“I have to tell her,” she whispers, but it isn’t Belle she’s contemplating. Regina has to know, has to hear about this betrayal from Emma herself before someone else gives her a skewed truth or uses it to hurt her. And they _will_ after the display at the tavern, she knows that. Rumpelstiltskin will find opportunity to let Regina know that the woman she’s so cozy with has been working with her worst enemies, and he’ll find an opportune time for maximum damage, she’s sure. And how Regina might react…

 

Emma shivers, imagining Regina teetering on an edge, unstable in her quest to be better and dealt a blow this glancing. No, it has to come from Emma and no one else, the sooner the better.

 

When Henry’s asleep and the castle is quiet, and it’s only the two of them. She’ll do it then.

 

She climbs back upstairs, through the dining hall to the entrance to the reflecting pool; and she pauses at the doorway to smile at mother and son, curled up together on an ornately decorated bench as they stare up at the sky. It’s a moment of peace, and maybe the last one for a long time.

 

She’s about to announce her presence when she hears her name and freezes just behind a thickly leafed tree. “Do you think Emma will ever leave?” Henry’s asking, and Emma swallows past the lump in her throat.

 

Regina’s face is obscured by the tree, and her voice is careful and modulated. “I don’t know, Henry. I should hope not. You do mean so much to her.”

 

“She makes you better,” Henry says, snuggling closer to his mother. “I like you like this.” There’s no trace of the boy who’d arrived at Emma’s doorstep and insisted that his mother was too evil to ever love anyone. Not anymore. “She makes us happier, right?”

 

“She does,” Regina agrees, kissing the top of Henry’s head. “Emma is…Emma is special. We’re fortunate that she’s ours.”

 

It’s strange, the way her vision blurs and she suddenly can’t quite see the figures in front of her, the way she’s suddenly bracing herself against the tree just to stay upright as her knees buckle.

 

Or maybe it isn’t so strange, not for a woman who’s never mattered to anyone, who’s never found a place to belong where someone would care about her enough to claim her as her own. She’s spent twenty-eight years in solitude, twenty-eight years spurning ties to families who would reject her and friends who would betray her; and she’d closed her eyes one day and wished on a cupcake that she wouldn’t be alone again and Henry had knocked on her door.

 

 _She’s ours. We’re fortunate that she’s ours_. She _is_ theirs now, uncontrovertibly and immutably so, the barriers she’d crafted around her heart demolished by an evil queen and the son she’d never dreamed she could have. And it’s terrifying to be this vulnerable, this close to perfect happiness and perfect despair all at once. To fear herself and to fear Regina as much as she…

 

“Do you love her?” Henry wants to know, and now Emma really does slide silently to the ground, her heart hammering against her chest so loudly she’s amazed Regina and Henry can’t hear it. _Do you love her?_ it demands, and Emma is powerless to respond, to expose her fragile heart any further.

 

Regina says only what they’d agreed upon after the last time Henry had asked that question. “Of course.” It’s barely a whisper, and Emma slumps against the tree and blinks back the burning tears that threaten to emerge.

 

She gathers enough of herself to rise and slip around the tree to join them noiselessly, and Regina’s eyes are wide and panicked when she sees her. She doesn’t acknowledge what she’s heard, nor does she speak at all, just laces her fingers with the queen’s and shifts so she’s sitting closer to their son.

 

There had been something she’d meant to say, but she can’t summon up the will to do anything in this place but sit with her family, their gazes reflecting the stars gleaming still and silent above their heads, scorching hot trillions of miles away.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter before the holiday distractions begin! We're nearly at the home stretch, so hang tight~

“This is it,” Regina says, white-faced with her fingers clenched into the sides of her seat. “After all this time…I’d thought it would be Rumpelstiltskin and his cohorts who’d do me in. But it’s you, Emma.” She shakes her head, eyes terrified and defiant still. “I trusted you, and you’re going to kill me.”

 

“You _asked_ for this!” Emma points out, outraged. “You had plenty of chances to change your mind and back out, but you insisted-“

 

Regina scowls. “I did it for Henry!”

 

“Uh-uh.” Emma swivels in her own seat to stare straight ahead, her hand sliding into her pocket to retrieve the key. “That isn’t going to cut it this time.”

 

“It’s true!” Regina protests, and now she’s testing her restraints, yanking at them and wincing when they tighten in response. “His enthusiasm for his studies should be rewarded. And if this… _car_ -“ She spits out the word with distaste. “-is what he’s interested in, then I would have been remiss not to agree to test it out with you.”

 

“He saw a Pixar movie,” Emma says, rolling her eyes. “I think ‘studies’ is taking it a little far.” She curls a finger between Regina’s hand and her seatbelt, prying her off of it. “Admit it, you wanted to try on my world for a change.”

 

Regina sniffs with distaste, but she gives up her grip on the seat and folds her hands across her lap primly, curling one leg behind the other as she focuses her gaze out the windshield instead. Her breath slows at last and she stops fidgeting, her eyes settling into catlike slits as she surveys her kingdom instead of the dashboard.

 

And naturally, that’s when Emma finally starts the car.

 

“Shit!” she yelps as they both disappear and reappear on the ground outside in a puff of purple magic, Emma still in a sitting position. She falls backwards inelegantly, banging her rear against a tree root. “Regina! That was supposed to happen.”

 

Regina stares down at her, nonplussed. _Somehow_ , she’d remembered to poof herself upright and stable while she’d forgotten with Emma, and she doesn’t offer her hand as Emma pulls herself off the ground. “You didn’t say. I thought you’d exploded the carriage.”

 

“I’ve been driving this car for eleven years! I’m not going to _explode_ it.” Emma rubs her backside, grimacing at the tenderness there. That’s going to be sore for days. “Do you know how many people safely get into cars every day without them blowing up? Most of them! And unless you’ve done some kind of weird mojo to my car while you’ve had it hidden out here in the woods-“ She blinks, the possibility just occurring to her then. “Wait. Did you?”

 

Regina arches an eyebrow. “I certainly did not. But Rumpelstiltskin took an interest in you, if you’ll recall, and I won’t have either of us an object in his manipulations.”

 

“Oh,” Emma breathes, her stomach sinking unpleasantly as reality comes rushing back with mention of the imp.

 

The other woman gives her a sharp look. “He hasn’t…approached you at all, has he?” There’s nothing but possessiveness and concern on her face, no suspicion, and this is _so_ the wrong place to tell Regina about the resistance, out in the woods at the start of a day that had begun so promisingly. Yesterday hadn’t been right but today isn’t either, and she wonders if there’s ever going to be a right time to admit it to Regina.

 

Tonight. When they’re at peace and alone, with nothing else between them.  

 

“I’ve seen him around,” Emma says finally, unwilling to lie. Avoidance isn’t untruth technically, right? Not as long as she still fully intends to tell Regina everything. “He hasn’t threatened me or anything though.” When she shudders, it’s not by fabrication at all. “I try to stay away from him.” And _that’s_ true now more than ever.

 

Regina exhales. “Good.” She’s brushing her lips somewhere just behind Emma’s ear and heading back toward the castle before Emma can lodge a protest.

 

Sighing, she opens the door to grab her keys back. Regina had moved her car to the far end of the kingdom early on in her imprisonment, far from the village at the center of the lands and tucked just behind the furthest edge of the castle grounds, near the fields where Henry rides. Today he’s indoors, though, catching up on his studies after their day out, and the fields are empty but for a few horses grazing near the stables.

 

Regina is already making her way to the dirt path at the border of the castle grounds when Emma catches up to her. “So that’s it?” she demands of the queen. “This is you running scared from my car?”

 

“I’m not running scared,” Regina says with disdain, but she’s glancing back at the Bug as though it might come to life and hurl itself at them without warning. “I simply require a day or two to inspect your machine and judge its safety on my own.”

 

“Right.” Emma narrows her eyes at the queen disbelievingly. Regina will do what she likes at her own pace, and though there’s a part of Emma that rebels at compromise now (and maybe she’d been looking forward to the opportunity to bring Regina to her world, to take her out driving past the kingdom border and toward the closest small town, to grab a bite in a diner without any hostile stares and to maybe give Regina a taste of what they could have, if they dared to leave the broken fairy tales behind), Regina’s done nothing but compromise of late. It isn’t fair to pressure her into Emma’s secret fantasies.

 

Regina pauses, her hands on her hips and her head cocked, and lets out a low whistle that startles Emma out of her reverie. “Huh?”

 

She gets a dismissive wave for her confusion, and as the queen whistles again, Emma finally sees where she’s looking. One of the stallions is making its way out of the paddock and toward them in the outer fields, summoned by Regina’s call, and as he nears Emma can see the saddle already affixed to his back.

 

“Come riding with me,” Regina says, and there’s a flush in her cheeks that hasn’t been there before and a hitch in her voice that could be excitement or apprehension, Emma doesn’t know.

 

She hasn’t seen this particular stallion ridden before. In fact, she doesn’t think she’s ever seen it anywhere near the stables. It runs free in the distant fields that Emma never quite makes it to, occasionally sprinting alongside Henry’s steed as he gallops past Snow and Emma like the pro he is. She’s certainly never seen it saddled and docile, patiently waiting for them to mount it.

 

“You planned this,” Emma realizes aloud. “You were never going to go for a drive with me.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Swan,” Regina retorts, but she’s calling Emma by her surname and her fingers are twisting through the stallion’s main and the ruddiness in her cheeks has only gotten darker as she turns her attention to the horse. She sighs. “I did intend to try out your carriage,” she permits.

 

But this had also been on the agenda for today, and Regina’s plans had been equally significant as Emma’s, two women who don’t dare to dream anymore indulging themselves for just one afternoon.

 

Regina doesn’t join them for Henry’s riding lessons. She doesn’t go near the stables and she never, ever rides in anything more personal than a carriage. Henry is certain that it’s always been about Daniel and Snow has suggested that it may be connected to Regina’s less apparent past than just the stable boy whom she’d once loved, but everyone is in agreement that Regina has reason to never ride again and probably never will.

 

And here she is, mounting a stallion as though this isn’t the first time she’s ridden in decades, and her hand is only a bit unsteady as she reaches out to help Emma up. “Have you ridden with anyone before?”

 

“Nope.” Emma grips Regina’s hand and throws her leg over the side of the saddle, landing snugly behind Regina and grimacing only a little at the reminder of her sore posterior. “Hopefully I’ll be better at it than I am on my own.” She rests her chin on Regina’s shoulder, feeling the woman still vibrating with disquiet against her.

 

“Wrap your arms around me,” Regina instructs, gently shrugging Emma off of her, and Emma slides her arms around Regina’s waist obligingly. “Ready?”

 

“Regina-“ she starts, and maybe it’s to probe for answers about what summoned this urge or maybe it’s just to offer encouragement, but she’s saved from figuring out which when Regina urges the stallion on and suddenly they’re running.

 

Wisps of Regina’s hair are whipping free in the wind and tickling against her face, the horse is flexing muscles against her legs that she’s never felt from her docile mounts, and she’s wrapped so tightly around Regina that she’s moving with her, rising and falling at the same tempo and feeling Regina’s exhilarated panting as her own. Whatever uneasiness there’d been is gone now that they’re in motion, wind and horse and rider all wrapped together in a whirl of natural vibrancy that’s impossible not to be drawn into.

 

Regina was born to ride in ways that she’s never seen before, and Emma laughs aloud with the sheer joy that Regina pulsates with, the unbridled freedom of a woman doing what she loves best. She’s still sore and shaky on the horse but it’s easy to ignore both when she’s wrapped around Regina, her eyes half-closed as the world blurs around them.

 

“Hold tight!” Regina calls, and abruptly they’re on the path at the other end of the castle border, trees rushing past them and the dirt road adding an extra thump to each gallop. They hurtle down the road past the village and back around it again, over a bridge and through the brush, and Emma ducks down to avoid the tree branches that reach out into the path, dangerously close to their faces. They bend away from the women as they near with an instinctive white-gold magic that she doesn’t recognize as Regina’s at all.

 

She thinks she might understand Regina out here, understand why she’s denied herself the fierce freedom that imbues their movements now. Regina is caged, caged by misery and self-loathing and vacant vengeance, and by her own admission she’s sought to cage herself further even after cursing her way into her so-called happy ending. And it is of course about the stable boy they’re racing past right now and likely also about her past, but Regina has rejected this ecstasy first and foremost because it _is_ ecstasy, unguarded and intimate and everything she’s drawn a curtain over in accepting the title of evil queen.

 

And with their every motion today, she casts off that yoke a little more, ceding more of the label that’s defined her. Today is a rebirth, the stirrings of change for Regina, and when she slows to a halt in Emma’s arms she feels- different, somehow, less stiffness in her posture, and she dismounts with lazy grace that’s more casual than regal.

 

For her part, Emma nearly tumbles off the horse, unsteady on the ground and soreness gripping her whole body at once. She checks the area around her to make sure it’s clean of horse droppings before she falls to a prone position on the ground, possibly permanently.

 

“Hey.” She tugs at the riding pants that Regina’s wearing today under a long coat- and _that_ should have been enough to tip her off that the queen had something else planned for today than the usual. “Come down here.”

 

Regina’s lip curls with something between amusement and distaste. “I seem to spend more time on the ground around you than I have since I married a king.” But she sinks into the grass considerably more elegantly than Emma, stretching her legs out in front of her and reaching out to smooth down the blonde’s hair.

 

Emma blows out a puff of air, flexing aching muscles and groaning at the pain that sparks through her in response. Wordlessly, Regina reaches out to massage her thighs with slow, soothing strokes. “Ungh,” Emma offers.

 

Regina doesn’t respond or stray from her ministrations beyond commenting, “You rode well today.”

 

“So did you.” It’s a vast understatement, but Regina smiles anyway, a twitch of her lips as she focuses on Emma’s thighs. And because she has little patience for the subtleties that everyone else seems to operate on around Regina, she barges on, “When was the last time you were on a horse, anyway?”

 

Regina pauses, a warm palm pressed against her inner thigh. “I rode on occasion as queen in the Enchanted Forest. Not here. And not like this in a long time.” She rubs the heel of her hand against the padded muscle there. “Perhaps not since Daniel was killed.”

 

Emma freezes, uncertain, and Regina graces her with an eyeroll of superlatively disdainful proportions. “Oh, don’t play the fool, I know _that girl_ told you all about him. If there’s one thing I can count on in this life, it’s that Snow White still can’t keep a secret.”

 

“Yeah.” Emma shakes her head, her own indiscretions still weighing on her. “Life’s probably simpler that way.”

 

“Maybe when you’re a privileged princess with no worries in the world.” Regina’s hands climb lower along her body, focusing on ankles she hasn’t realized were in pain until now. “I know my life would have been simpler without Snow White’s interference.”

 

Snow is the villain of the story, as far as Regina is concerned, and Emma does sympathize with that as much as she’s uncomfortable with the loathing still so strong in Regina’s voice. Snow isn’t perfect, but she’s kind and she’s loyal and a stranger could see that she still feels compassion and regret for what she’d done to Regina. “She didn’t kill Daniel,” she says, and Regina hesitates at her feet. “She was a kid. An idiot, sure. Naïve, definitely. But she didn’t mean to-“ Regina makes a noise at the back of her throat and Emma throws up a hand, pressing forward. “Your mother _meant_ to.”

 

“You know nothing about my mother.” It emerges as a hoarse bark more than a growl, both women reluctant to break the placid serenity of the moment anymore than it already has shattered.

 

Emma curls her hand around Regina’s upper arm. “Then tell me.”

 

“I’d rather not.” Regina turns away from her, tilting her face toward the sun.

 

Emma gets it, though. She hasn’t had a family before, hasn’t had parents who’d raised her from childhood like Regina had; but she imagines that if she’d found those people sometime in her life, she might have been equally reluctant to face the reality of a mother whose love was as dangerous and painful as Regina’s mother’s love. Who would kill her daughter’s lover and force her into a marriage she’d railed against for reasons that are at best out of some twisted form of love that isn’t love at all.

 

It would be easier for Regina to loathe a pampered princess than to acknowledge that her mother didn’t love her, and easier to dwell on hatred and revenge than consider the absence of the love she’d craved in her life. It’s immature and it’s selfish and it’s ridiculous, but it’s all Regina’s had for all this time, and Emma can’t dismiss her so readily for it.

 

“It no longer matters,” Regina says quietly, and when she looks down again she won’t quite meet Emma’s eyes. “I’ve spent so long clinging to the past that I’ve hurt…so many people.” She’s contemplating the stables when she speaks, and Emma follows her gaze to where Daniel is lumbering clumsily toward one of the horses, a slight light-haired man in a long white coat observing him with folded arms and a scowl. “And it’s past time to lay the damaged to rest.”

 

Then that’s really why they’re here today, and Emma’s heart wrenches at the pain on her lover’s face. “Regina…”

 

But Regina is already rising, making her way toward the stables with her stallion trotting behind her, and Emma can only pull herself to her feet and follow them to where Frankenstein is standing, sulky and dissatisfied. “If you would just let me take care of the dissection-“ he begins. Regina glares at him and he falls silent.

 

“What do I need to do?” she asks, and the gloss of regal scorn in her voice is slipping away with every word, fading into smallness and apprehension.

 

Dr. Frankenstein heaves a sigh. “Just removing the substitute heart should be sufficient. He isn’t a man, just reanimated flesh, and with nothing left to animate him-“

 

“Silence,” Regina orders, and she sweeps over to Daniel, ignoring her audience completely. Emma glances at the progressively crankier-looking Frankenstein and follows the queen. This isn’t her mountain to climb, but it’s one she can’t imagine allowing Regina to conquer alone. So she hovers, uncomfortable and sick to her stomach with displaced grief and shared sympathy for the woman in front of her.

 

Daniel is staring at Regina with eyes that don’t seem to recognize her at all, docile when she presses trembling fingers against his chest. “Daniel…” she’s whispering in a broken voice, over and over again. “Daniel…”

 

Emma watches them from a few feet away, her own hands twitching at her inability to do anything. She wants to pull Regina away, to take her hand, to bring her back to the outer fields and reclaim that peace they’d shared moments before. This is Regina healing, leaving the past behind and giving Daniel the peace he should have gotten decades ago, but it’s raw and it’s cruel to have her let go like this.

 

Maybe she deserves it, after all the evil she’s done. (No one deserves to watch the one she loved die twice, and Emma is even queasier at the idea that she could entertain any other judgment for a single moment.)

 

Regina bows her head, her hand slipping into Daniel’s chest in the next moment as she whispers, “I love you.”

 

Emma sees what Regina can’t, sees recognition dawn at once in Daniel’s eyes and his gaze shift downward to his former fiancé as she pulls the borrowed heart from his chest. She opens her mouth to speak, to say _something_ , because Daniel is looking more aware and alert than he ever has before-

 

-But it’s too late, and Daniel crumbles into dust as Regina holds his heart in her outstretched arm, staring at it instead of the man disappearing before their eyes, tears streaming down her face unchecked.

 

Emma crosses the distance between them in two steps and has an arm halfway around Regina’s back before she freezes up. She doesn’t know what her place is here, doesn’t know what she can do or what Regina wants from her or really anything at all beyond the fact that Regina needs her, needs support now more than ever.

 

Regina doesn’t fold into her arms, doesn’t allow herself that weakness even now, but she’s still crying in gasping sobs and holding Daniel’s heart to her, heedless of Emma’s eyes on her or Emma’s hand still awkwardly extended toward her shoulders. She holds the heart closer, touches it to her own chest as though she can feel it beating against her own, matching in time and unstoppable.

 

And then she’s turning to Emma at last, wet-faced and red-eyed, and captures her gaze with eyes that are grief-stricken with a second, fathomless emotion swimming within their depths. She doesn’t speak, but she takes Emma’s hand with her free one and passes the heart to Emma before she walks alone into the stables, her stallion trailing behind her obediently.

 

It’s still warm and pulsating in her grasp, but it isn’t slimy or bloody like non-magical guts tend to be, just smooth and glowing and alive. Still, though, she shudders at the sensation of it in her palm and she doesn’t protest when Frankenstein retrieves it, scowling still. “What a waste of a successful experiment,” he mutters, scoffing “Sentimentality!” as he puts the heart into a small wooden box.

 

“Oh, shut up,” Emma mumbles back, her eyes still on the stable where Regina had vanished. Five minutes. She’ll give her five minutes, and then she’s going in after her and making sure that the queen isn’t doing anything drastic.

 

But Regina emerges only a few moments later, a grooming brush in her hand. Her eyes are still rimmed with red but her gait is steady, and she begins to comb her horse’s mane with meticulous attention. “Emma,” she says, so abruptly that both Emma and Frankenstein jump. “Tell Henry we’ll go back to town tomorrow.” She pauses to untangle a particularly tricky knot. “And _that girl_ might as well join us too or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

 

She doesn’t look back at them, and Emma can feel the smile bubbling up through the sadness, the promise of a better day to come.


	19. Chapter 19

And now they’re back in the carriage out to the village, but the air in the compartment is heavy with the tension centered around the two women seated opposite each other, each avoiding the other’s gaze. Snow is focused on Henry as they peer through the window together, but her hands are twisting together in her lap and she keeps glancing at Regina, whose eyes are fixed only on her son, ignoring the other woman altogether.

 

For her part, Emma has a hand resting on Regina’s in a valiant attempt to calm the queen that only seems to agitate Snow White, but it’s kept Regina quiet beyond an escaped scoff or two so Emma considers it a success. “Thank you,” she murmurs, leaning into Regina’s shoulder for a moment, and Regina curls her hand around Emma’s in response.

 

Snow coughs loudly, probably unintentionally except that now she’s watching them again and not even bothering to disguise her discomfort, and Regina’s eyes narrow at the former princess as Emma closes her own, wincing. “Uh,” she says stupidly in an attempt to change the subject. “So Red must be excited to see you, huh?”

 

Regina scowls and suddenly she’s tipping Emma’s chin forward, capturing her lips in a kiss that escalates so rapidly that it can’t be unintentional. Emma’s powerless to resist, kissing back with the same fervor and sighing with pleasure when Regina attacks her neck, biting a path down her collarbone as her hands trace uneven circles across her back and Emma’s own hands creep down below the shawl that shields Regina’s back from view to squeeze and elicit a rather delightful choking sound from the queen.

 

She’s halfway on Regina’s lap and pressing kisses to the curve of her cheek to a sensitive earlobe as Regina growls with approval when Emma remembers- much too late- where they are and who’s present. _Yikes_. She touches her lips to Regina’s once more regretfully before pulling away, winding her arm around the other woman’s waist and tilting her head against her shoulder in a half-attempt to apologize to her for ending the kiss and half to hide the flush in her cheeks that’s only partially out of embarrassment.

 

Henry is making gagging noises, just as red-faced as Emma. “As nice as it is to know you two finally like each other, can you not do that in front of me? Ever again?” he requests archly. He’s never sounded more like his adoptive mother and Emma grins at the floor, nudging Regina’s shoulder with her head.

 

Regina lets out a short burst of breath that might be laughter or annoyance or- just as likely- embarrassment, but she presses her lips together firmly and says with equal gravity, “Emma will attempt to control herself.” She gets a kick in the ankle for her efforts but Emma can’t be too bothered when her heart is still racing and Regina’s fingers are drawing patterns against her hip, even while Snow’s eyes are on the ground and her pale skin is a deep tomato red.

 

Snow nearly leaps out of her seat when the carriage comes to a halt, and Henry’s all too glad to pull her out with him before his guards are even in place, dragging her to the water and calling out to several of his friends. “Look who’s here! I told you she’d come someday!”

 

Regina’s lips are pursed again, the distaste on her face unrestrained and unconcealed, and she’s sitting back down as though she plans to stay in the carriage before Emma seizes her hand. “Hey.”

 

“No.”

 

“No?”

 

Regina scowls at her. “No, I’m not going out there as though Snow and I have mended fences and all is forgiven. I won’t stand by and… _enjoy_ today.” She spits out _enjoy_ like it’s a curse. “This is for Henry and Henry alone. I place no import on what the peasants think of me.”

 

She’d thought they’d made progress yesterday, that Regina might have been willing to let go of the past, but she’d been naïve. There’s too much bitterness still, too much resentment that will take more than one day by the stables to heal. And while patience has never been her strong suit, she wills herself to nod now, to let Regina’s hand go and to murmur, “You might not care, but I do.”

 

Regina stiffens, but Emma only presses her lips to the queen’s cheek and dismounts from the carriage alone.

 

It’s for the best. Regina glaring at Snow or barely repressing her hatred toward the town hero will be as poorly received as the curse itself, and she can’t pressure Regina into behaving and playing nice. And she’s disappointed, but this is still a step forward, and she’ll take her victories as they come.

 

“Emma!” Snow is calling her name, her cheeks flushed with another excitement as she sits on a patch of grassy moss near the riverbed, surrounded by eager children. Of course. They’d all been children when Snow had been crowned queen, too, and Emma doesn’t doubt that she’d been the hero of the kingdom, beloved by all but the woman seated in the carriage behind them.

 

She’s singing to them as she gathers flowers to form wreaths for the girls closest to her, her voice so sweet that there are birds fluttering around them singing along. The children are spellbound, and Emma’s kind of charmed, too. This is Snow White as a princess, given new energy and joy from the interruption of her confinement, and she belongs with nature and surrounded by children like some kind of woodland elf.

 

A few feet from the circle of children, there are some older boys- and the surly Hansel is with them, though he’s shifting uncomfortably and not speaking- with Henry, gazing down at their former ruler. “How did you trick the queen into bringing us Queen Snow?” one of them wants to know.

 

Henry’s brow furrows and he shrugs, glancing back to the carriage for a moment. “I just asked her and she said it was okay.” It’s a stretch of the truth but it’s enough for the children nearby, who nod approvingly and ask no more about Regina.

 

Emma climbs onto a nearby rock, taking in her surroundings while she enjoys the light breeze and the smell of the woods and the water. Snow is teaching some of the younger kids how to make their own flower garlands, laughing with them and encouraging them to crown each other and Emma herself. A few of the older children have run off, probably to share the news of Snow’s arrival to the rest of the town. The rest are back in the river now, Henry among them, swinging on ropes and climbing up branches as they hum Snow’s song together.

 

It’s an idyll, a perfect snapshot in time that Snow has brought to them all, and as glad as Emma is, she can’t help the loneliness that drains her of the rush that the day seems to fill everyone else with. She’s happy here, happy for Henry and Snow and these innocents who are only glad to have someone important to them back with them after years of exile, and happy for herself that she’d been able to have a hand in this. But it feels like an empty joy, now when she’s grown accustomed to seeing her own bliss reflected in dark eyes that smile so rarely that every time they lighten it’s a gift in itself, when soft hands and sharp words can’t conceal an affection for her that makes her feel at home in this once-alien world.

 

She misses Regina, misses sharing this with her, and there’s a lump in her throat at the thought of the carriage that separates them, that allows Regina to hide in the darkness instead of joining them in the sunshine. Maybe it’s too much to ask from the universe to resolve this without pain, to truly have it all, have her closest friend and her son and her…Regina…at peace all at once. Good is good and evil is evil, and nothing in this world comes without a price, even redemption. There’s no space for shades of grey in fairytales.

 

She ducks her head, staring at her own reflection in the water, studying the shadows lining her face as they ripple away into the vastness of the lake. They join with another reflection, one of shimmering deep blues and brown undertones and considerably longer than any of the reflections of the children present. _Regina._

 

She scoots over without looking up, and the queen seats herself on an outcropping of rock just above Emma’s seat, gathering the extra material of her dress around her so it won’t dip into the water. “You kept staring at the carriage. I was concerned something was wrong.”

 

Emma can’t answer, so she nestles up against her lover and lays her head down against Regina’s thigh instead. A light hand glides across her curls in response, and she doesn’t need to look up to know that Regina’s watching only her, not the woman still surrounded by adoring fans a few feet away.

 

They sit in silence, content even as the children race around them and Henry demands that they watch as he somersaults into the water from above, and it isn’t until they’re interrupted by a child’s voice that they both jerk.

 

“I made you a crown to match your dress!” It’s a little girl who can’t be more than three or four standing in front of them, holding up a wreath decorated with deep blue flowers, and she doesn’t even pause before she’s clambering up onto Regina’s rock and laying the crown proudly on the queen’s head.

 

Regina is momentarily speechless, something Emma’s rarely seen before and would have probably enjoyed if the girl’s lip hadn’t started trembling at Regina’s lack of reaction as she whimpers, “Don’t you like it?”

 

Emma nudges the other woman and Regina’s face splits into a smile as wide as any she’s ever given Emma. “It’s the most beautiful crown I’ve ever worn,” she pronounces, taking the girl’s hands in her own.

 

“Really?” The child’s eyes are round with wonder, and she reaches out to touch her wreath, a chubby little palm pressed to Regina’s hair.

 

Emma confirms it without thinking. “Really,” she agrees, squeezing Regina’s thigh.

 

“But now you have no crown of your own,” Regina says, frowning. “And none that would match your own pretty dress.” She extends her hands and a garland appears out of thin air, intricately woven with flowers of the yellow and blue and orange of the little girl’s dress dotting the pattern.

 

“Wow,” the girl breathes, and she enfolds Regina in a hug so quick before she runs off to show her friends that Emma wouldn’t have been sure that it had actually happened if not for the way Regina is smiling fondly in the direction of the children and her worst enemy.

 

She wonders, not for the first time, about Henry’s childhood, about muddy hands and chocolate kisses and Regina the mother laying aside Regina the queen for her child. She has no regrets, not for the life she could have had with her son that would have meant a life without his mother as well, but she wishes she could have seen it, could have watched Henry thaw the evil queen a thousand times in childhood and fallen a little more for this family every day.

 

And now there are adults approaching, parents summoned by their children to greet their beloved Snow, and Regina is tensing up again, searching for her guards and casting an apprehensive eye toward their carriage. But she doesn’t remove the crown of flowers, and Emma runs reassuring fingers along the inside of her thigh, and the villagers pay them both little mind as they rush to embrace the queen they’d wanted.

 

“Would it be so terrible?” Emma asks, echoing a question she’d asked Regina only once before. “To give the people what they wanted and to…to take what we wanted for ourselves?” Regina’s life is about vengeance, her joy rooted in the pain of the people around her, and she wonders if Regina can even comprehend happiness outside others’ suffering. Does she know how much joy she feels around Henry, around their family and this life? Or is it all tempered by hatred and bitterness and a craving to wound? Emma can’t believe that, can’t believe that Regina is so isolated from contentment even now, regardless of what the queen insists.

 

“I should return to the carriage,” is Regina’s only response, and she makes her way back to the road.

 

Her face appears at the window almost immediately, and she watches the people in front of her with no expression at all.

 

\--

 

To all their surprise, when Snow is reluctant to climb back into the confinement of the carriage and the people around her protest it passionately, Regina just sighs and says, “Very well, walk on,” and shuts the door to the compartment before Henry and Emma can climb back inside. Emma’s left with the uneasy feeling of having chosen a side in a war that’s barely over, and it’s only when Regina’s carriage takes off with a lurch in the direction of the tavern that she tears her eyes away from it and hurries to catch up with Snow and Henry.

 

They’re surrounded by doting villagers but Snow reaches for her hand at once, bringing her to her other side as she clasps Henry’s shoulder, and there’s so much warmth in her gaze that Emma ducks her head and tries to forget the weight in her heart that calls for notice only when Regina is isolated and they’re all…not. “I’m so glad you’re here today,” Snow murmurs, squeezing her hand. “I’m so glad _I’m_ here today,” she amends, laughing to herself. “My people have needed me for so long, and I…”

 

It’s Henry who asks the question they’re both thinking, furrowing his brow with concern. “You’re coming back with us, right?” They’d promised as much to Regina, and Snow had seemed amenable enough in the castle, but freedom is freedom and Snow has finally gotten her taste of it.

 

Snow’s eyes widen. “Of course!” she says, loud enough for the people around her to hear and sigh with mass disappointment. “Still, though…this is a beginning to something more, isn’t it?”

 

“Mother will let you leave again,” Henry says firmly, all the conviction of a ten-year-old who believes too strongly in his voice. “I know it.”

 

But Snow smiles, the same unwavering certainty in her voice as she responds, “I do too.” A shadow crosses her face. “I’m sorry Regina didn’t join us much today. I don’t want to come between your family for my own happiness.”

 

And that’s Snow, still as in tune with Regina’s needs as she is to her own- or maybe it’s only with Emma’s needs, and the lag in her step as she thinks too much of the queen cloaked in darkness and resentment and isolation- and Emma softens enough to smile and point out, “Well, you’re family too, aren’t you?”

 

There’s only a strangled breath in response, Snow’s eyes swimming with tears as she gazes at Emma in awe, and Henry is grinning madly and Emma’s feeling both stifled and touched at the emotion in Snow’s face before they’re all distracted by a figure cloaked in red and shouting as she tears down the road, “ _Snow!_ ”

 

And then Red and Snow are embracing and both are crying and babbling at the same time as they cling to each other, the world around them forgotten and Henry and Emma left standing aside, bemused, as Regina’s carriage pulls up to Granny’s up ahead.

 

And maybe there’s something close to amusement on the queen’s face as she descends to join them and takes in the scene in front of them, though it’s masked the moment Emma looks at her with raised brow. “They behave as though they haven’t seen each other in years.”

 

“Imagine that.” Emma bumps her shoulder against Regina’s, grinning a little at the contagious exhilaration that permeates the town today. It’s a joy that Regina has brought to the people she loathes, and she can feel the tension still keeping the queen teetering on a precipice, so close to surrendering to pleasure or despair. “Want to go inside?” It’ll be safer there and Emma’s still wary of the resistance and still protective of the woman and the boy she stands with, still aware that their enemies might strike at any time. She has a sword at her hip and Regina has enough magic for the both of them, but in the open and surrounded by people, Emma still feels more vulnerable than ever.

 

“Please,” Regina murmurs, and there’s a ghost of a kiss against Emma’s jaw as they make their way into the tavern, barely earning glances from the people now growing accustomed to their presence.

 

And then Snow and Red and their companions are pouring inside and the place _erupts_ , the people of the kingdom running to Snow and falling to their knees and even Grumpy looks a little wet in the eyes as he stands back, watching the throng and waiting for a moment with the returned princess who’d never quite made it to queen. Emma even spots some members of the resistance present, dwarves and a few of the villagers, and they show no sign of the hostility toward Snow that she’s seen from the rest of their group as they embrace Snow and she hugs them back with teary smiles and earnest words. Regina sighs, rolling her eyes, but there isn’t nearly as much rancor there as there could be and Emma privately thanks whatever fates run this fairytale land.

 

“Snow!” Henry calls out, gesturing for her to join them, and to Emma’s surprise, Snow immediately stops receiving guests and takes her seat at their table, shifting aside only so Red alone can join them. It’s a clear message to the people around them, an alignment with Regina and her son that they can’t ignore, and now there are speculative glances from all directions and people crowding into the seats at the nearest tables to be close to their chosen ruler.

 

The people will accept Regina if they receive Snow in the bargain. Regina knows it too, if the way her eyes close for a moment with weary frustration is any indication, and it seems Henry has been aware of it all along. Henry and Snow are the long-term planners of the group, the ones who think first and act later and will architect plans so detailed in the process that they have the whole future mapped out in advance. They’re setting a stage today, a new reality where everyone might be happy someday, and Regina and Emma are just along for the ride.

 

Across the room, Grumpy is still standing with several of the other dwarves, and Emma grins, getting up to bring them over to the table. There’s no reason for their hatred of Regina to get in the way today, not when this is their moment to see Snow White, and she winds her way through the crowd to greet Grumpy when he grabs her and yanks her into a corner, his eyes wilder than she’s ever seen them before. “You brought Snow here.”

 

“We all did,” Emma corrects him, her eyes flitting back to Regina as she leans in to ask Red something at their table. Red stands, but it’s only to move to the bar and retrieve some drinks. “Henry and Regina and-“

 

“ _You brought Snow here_ ,” he repeats, and it’s with an urgency that punctures her good mood. “And I haven’t been told about a resistance meeting in a week.”

 

“Good, maybe they’re winding down,” Emma says, but that’s wrong, that can’t be it, those royals and Jefferson and Rumpelstiltskin aren’t going to give up now. If Grumpy hasn’t been invited to meetings, it’s because they don’t want him there, don’t trust him with whatever they’ve been planning. And if they don’t trust him- “You think Snow’s in danger.”

 

He shrugs helplessly. “I think they know that your queen has been spending time among the people, and I think they know that I trust you more than I trust them. I don’t want to-“

 

“Grumpy!” And they both stop at once because Snow has followed Emma’s path across the tavern and seen her old friend at last. “Grumpy, you’re here!” She runs to the grouchy dwarf and hugs him so tightly that he really does cry, a few tears leaking from his eyes as he growls out, “My queen,” and wraps his own arms around hers just as tightly.

 

Emma doesn’t stay to watch, not with dread climbing back up through the joy and sudden fear for her son and his mother still seated at the same table as always- _the same table, the same routine every time, how could we be so stupid?_ \- and she tears through the crowd, shoving people aside and knocking them over as she races back to their table. They have to leave, they have to go _now_ , because there’s new danger and Regina is standing up, looking puzzled at her desperation but catching enough of it to seize Henry to her and start toward Emma-

 

-The explosion tears through the wall just beside where they’d been sitting moments before, and suddenly the air is alive with debris, with screams and pounding feet and an enormous shield of glowing magic that billows out from Emma and meets the eruption head-on. There’s blood and pained shouts and cries for help, and Emma can’t even think about the magic that she can’t control that’s saving the bulk of the tavern, can’t focus on it as her ears pop and everything is suddenly muted, sounds straining in only from a distance, and _where is Regina, where is their target, ReginaReginaREGINA_ -

 

She stumbles forward into the smoke and the damage and nearly trips over a body flat on the floor, clad in deep blues and with hair lightly singed and wild from the dust that thickens the air. “No. No. Nonononono,” she chants to herself, falling to the ground to touch tentative fingers to Regina’s side, to pull her over to face her.

 

“Regina,” Snow’s voice breathes out in horror behind her, and Regina’s eyes snap open as she rolls over, revealing only cuts and bruises and the boy she’d been shielding huddled beneath her, sobbing, with a bloody arm at a terrifyingly unnatural angle.

 

“Henry,” Emma whispers, crouching beside them both, and Henry is _fine_ , he’s alive and he’s reaching for her with the arm that does work and he’s sobbing into her clothes as she struggles toward Regina. “Regina?”

 

Regina is sitting up, dark eyes fixed on a spot just behind Snow, and she slides away from Emma’s extended arm, pulling herself to her feet. “Henry,” she says quietly, and it’s not a request for him as much as an accusation to the dwarf who’d followed Snow over to them.

 

Grumpy shakes his head wildly, and Emma only then grasps the danger she hadn’t anticipated, sees how the rest of the people in the destroyed tavern have backed away and are separated from the cold-eyed queen by the still-shimmering shield of magic Emma’s somehow thrown up. “No, it was the resistance. Not me. I wouldn’t have-“

 

“Regina!” She’s shouting and reaching for the queen’s arm as Regina raises it, leaving Henry slumped on the ground as Snow’s mouth opens in a scream as well. And it’s too late, it’s been too late since the moment Henry had been hurt, and the madness glowing in Regina’s eyes isn’t going to be tamped down by _anything_ today, not Emma and not Snow and not even Henry.

 

A twist of her hand, two fingers pressed to her thumb in irritation, and Grumpy’s head mimics the sharp movement, jerking to the side.

 

He’s on the ground in an instant, eyes sightless and empty and his mouth still open in protest. Snow is sobbing, falling onto his body and weeping his name, and Emma sinks back to the ground, clutching Henry tightly to her, hiding his face as he cries even more. She swats at her face with the back of her hand, frustrated at her own tears as they escape and blur her view of the queen still standing erect and gazing down at her handiwork.

 

“He was innocent,” she whispers, and Grumpy had been a _friend_ , even if he’d just been a guy she could drink with, a loyal friend to Snow and the one who had warned her about this to begin with. “This is-“

 

 _Unforgivable_. She’d thought Regina might falter someday but this isn’t faltering, this is…this is murder, foul and ugly and spurred by rage. This is beyond Emma’s capacity to overlook, not for Henry and not for her own selfish desires, and she clutches their son even tighter as she watches Regina take stock of the hardness in her eyes.

 

Regina, for her part, looks away from Emma and Henry, and turns to the people now cowering a few feet behind Grumpy’s corpse. “One of you will bring me to this resistance,” she commands, and fire lights up in her hand, a threat as potent as the one that had stricken Henry.

 

And Emma doesn’t _care_ , not anymore, not about protecting Regina when Regina is beyond protection and beyond Emma’s support altogether. When Grumpy is still lying on the floor and Regina looks at him with nothing more than stony satisfaction.

 

“I can take you there,” she says, her voice hoarse and thick from tears both shed and forcibly restrained.

 

Regina’s back is still to her, and the tiny part of Emma that doesn’t take savage pleasure in the ability to hurt Regina back- to wound her with the same crushing pain and disappointment that she’s wounded Emma with- is perfectly attuned to the subtle arch of her spine, to the way she pauses and sags just a hair with Emma’s admission.

 

And then she turns, and there’s nothing other than practiced coldness on her face, a mask set in place for decades first discarded, then restored, for a woman who’d dreamed once a folly of loving an evil queen. “Very well,” says Regina. 


	20. Chapter 20

There’s the low buzz of murmurs around them, people quietly tending to each other’s injuries and backing out the door as soon as they can, eyes darting back to Regina every few moments. Snow has joined them, her face worn and weary as she bandages up one of the other dwarves, but Emma doesn’t dare make eye contact with any of them. Not while Grumpy is still crumpled on the floor a few feet away. Not while Regina is crouched over her, a glowing hand hovering over the scrapes on Henry’s cheek.

 

She doesn’t look at Emma, and Emma tightens her grip on Henry, her lips pressed to the top of his head and her eyes on Regina’s hand. She doesn’t trust herself to speak yet, not until Henry flinches away from Regina and whimpers, “It _hurts_.”

 

“It doesn’t look like it’s getting better,” she says finally, wrapping a hand against Regina’s wrist to guide her away from Henry. It’s a little too tight, a little less gentle than it probably should be, and she hates herself for recoiling when Regina shifts, for the instinctive fear that floods her heart at the movement of the queen.

 

Regina’s eyes flicker to Emma’s, dark and fathomless, and Emma stares back with as still a face as she can muster. “My magic’s too unstable for healing right now,” she mutters, retracting her hand, but she doesn’t pull away, doesn’t tear her eyes from Emma’s.

 

And if it weren’t Henry who’s there between them, shaking with pain and trauma, Emma doesn’t know where this would go, what she or Regina might have done to the other. This wouldn’t end like it had with the Huntsman. This isn’t the temporary, magical evil that a supposed savior can end. This is the evil Emma knows, the one she’s seen from the worst of the bail jumpers she’d once hunted down. Murderers who’d kill without a second thought, who would shoot an innocent in their way when Emma’s gotten too close to them and who wouldn’t think twice about it later.

 

That’s who Regina is, and she’d known it in the back of her head all along but never allowed herself to acknowledge it, gladly losing herself in the smokescreen that is the world around them and the son they share. No one takes Bond villains seriously, amidst the mustache-twirling and grand world-ending plans. No one looks at baddies in fantasy as anything more than plot points to be easily defeated in the end. But Regina had been intricately _complex_ , so much more than the evil she’d seemed capable of, and Emma had been wary but let her guard down all the same, surrendering with ease to the forces of good she’d sought out in Regina- first for Henry’s sake, then for her own.

 

And Emma knows that there’s a shameful part of her that still isn’t rational, that’s still reacting to this new, awful development out of hurt feelings and wounded dreams, focusing on _Regina let me down_ instead of _Regina killed a man_. It’s why she can’t break their locked gazes, why she can barely be this close to Regina without lashing out in an ill-advised attack. Why every moment that her fingers are touching Regina, she craves to punish her more, to deliver another blow that would shatter the other woman.

 

And just as ardent is her desire to be punished right back, to have Regina turn on her and strike out at her just as she had Grumpy, to react with violence and scathing hatred because Emma _deserves_ it, Emma deserves it for her own stupid delusions and false hope. Sheer arrogance, that’s what it’s been, to believe that someone could change so fully so soon and to keep pushing and pushing for progress until something had given way within Regina and the burden of redemption been too much.

                                                                                          

Emma isn’t responsible for murder, and she has the presence of mind to acknowledge that. But she’s fallen prey to her own inflated expectations when it comes to Regina, she knows. She’d been rightfully afraid for so long but had given unconditional trust to the other woman at last, and she hates Regina for it nearly as much as she hates herself.

 

But superseding her pain and pride and heartache is Henry, still trembling in her arms- Henry, who needs them both right now and not the screwed up messes they’ve become- and she finally has the presence of mind to venture, “Can you show me how to heal him?”

 

She can see the indecision in the queen’s eyes, can see something very much like betrayed pain flit across Regina’s gaze- and it’s impossible, after the time they’ve spent together, not to know Regina’s own agony right now, not to feel gutted as Emma recognizes and experiences what she’s inflicted on the other woman as acutely as she experiences her own betrayal; and it’s even more difficult to compartmentalize it away in return- but Regina finally inclines her head toward Henry in a reluctant nod.

 

When she instructs Emma, it’s curt and impatient, and Emma understands exactly what she’d meant before that her magic had been too unstable. She can’t focus herself, can’t channel any of the magic that’s been springing forward so often lately unbidden. Magic is about emotion, and Emma’s afraid of her emotions right now, afraid of letting them free in any capacity, especially when she’s this close to Henry.

 

Still, though, the bruises are lightening and Henry’s breathing a little more easily when she finally gives up, her magic fading away in her hands. “Light magic,” Regina mumbles. “Easier to heal than to destroy. _Hero_ magic,” she sneers, and Emma stiffens at the contempt in her voice. “For our heroic rebel, on a noble mission to overthrow the evil tyrant.”

 

Maybe it’d be justified to point out that she’s barely been involved with the resistance since she’d seen Regina begin to change. Maybe it’d be fair to both of them to let Regina know exactly how much the resistance has repulsed her, and how she hadn’t even suspected this attack. But hate…hate is good right now, is more potent than any excuses or retorts. Let Regina hate her. It makes it all the easier to hate her right back.

 

So instead she grits out, “I need to set Henry’s arm,” and touches the arm they’d both avoided until now and receives a gasp of pain from Henry in response.

 

“Wait.” Regina’s voice is like ice but her face reveals only concern for her son. “Let me numb it first.” This magic gives her no trouble, and when she’s done there’s an odd sheen to Henry’s arm. Emma jams it back into place and they both wince at the sound it makes before they reach for it at once, supporting Henry as he mumbles a protest Emma can’t make out.

 

“Regina.” It’s Snow’s voice, dark and somber, and when she kneels down next to them, Emma moves between her and the queen instinctively. Regina won’t take Snow away too, not without a fight, no matter how deeply her resentment runs and how unstable she is right now.

 

But Snow is holding a stick and wrapping Henry’s arm with strips from her dress, working on automatic and barely noticing either of them. She glances at Regina once and Emma tenses for another confrontation, but Regina only barks out, “Get on with it,” and takes Henry’s other arm as Emma exhales in quiet relief.

 

Regina looks at her, scathing disdain on her face that can’t disguise the hurt underneath. “Do you think me so unable to control myself?”

 

“I don’t know what I think of you anymore,” Emma says honestly, and Regina laughs, rich and bitter and mocking all at once.

 

“I suppose we have that in common now.” And Emma doesn’t know which one of them Regina is talking about, but she identifies with the sentiment either way.

 

“Mom,” Henry interrupts, his eyes pleading. He’s been so quiet until now that she starts at the sound, gripping his healthy arm. “Can you help me up? Please?”

 

She hauls him to his feet, careful of his arm, and when she stumbles on the shattered remnants of a table, automatic hands steady her from behind. “Watch your step,” Regina murmurs, so close when Emma turns that she could tilt her head and it would touch the queen’s forehead, and for a moment it’s almost as though Regina hasn’t fallen off the wagon big time, as though Emma hasn’t admitted a betrayal nearly as awful, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to lean forward and brush her lips against Regina’s.

 

Reality sets in with that final thought, and Emma pulls back so quickly that Regina’s fingers slide off her in an instant. “You’re holding on to Henry,” Regina clarifies, curling her lip in contempt. Her eyes are raw and hesitant behind her expression, and Emma takes another step back as they close off again.

 

“Can’t you just use your magic to take us home?” Henry asks, his voice small. He still clings to Emma’s hand, lagging behind her as they walk. She knows what he’s doing, knows that he sees himself as the final shield between his two mothers and knows that Regina would never attack anyone as long as Henry stands between her and them, and she’d urge him away if she didn’t believe the same thing. “Dr. Frankenstein can make my arm better, right?”

 

Regina shakes her head. “Not yet. We must make the one stop first.”

 

Emma stiffens, the words escaping out of sheer disbelief. “You’re bringing our _son_ down to Rumpelstiltskin?”

 

“ _My_ son, Miss Swan,” Regina bites out. “And I won’t have him without me until we’re back in the castle.”

 

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Emma’s fully turned to face Regina now, a protective arm around Henry as she glares unafraid at the flashing eyes daring her to keep arguing, to question a queen who could and might kill her in an instant. “We’ll take him back first then. Do you really think anyone’s sitting around and waiting for you at the resistance right now anyway?”

 

“He will be there.” Regina snarls. “And that’s all I can trust right now." _Certainly not you, Miss Swan_ remains unspoken, but Emma hears it all the same. Regina turns away, stepping over the table fragments to the hole ripped through the wall to outside. “You’re welcome to show me the way and then leave.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Emma snaps back without thinking. “If you’re going to face Rumpelstiltskin, you’re not doing it alone.” She freezes, deer-in-headlights, as there’s a sharp intake of breath from Regina. “I mean. While Henry’s with you.”

 

“Of course,” Regina says with a strangled voice. “Henry is our priority.”

 

_Henry, Henry, Henry_. This has to be about Henry, has to be about confronting Rumpelstiltskin with her own righteous anger- and he’d hurt their son and might have killed him and Regina if they hadn’t moved away from the explosion in time, and she feels a frisson of uncontrollable rage at the thought of it. This can’t be about protecting Regina or fighting beside her or that awful pit in her stomach that gnaws at her when she imagines the queen fighting the only person in this kingdom more powerful than she is.

 

Regina doesn’t get her loyalty anymore. Regina can’t get her loyalty anymore.

 

Emma grits her teeth and stalks forward, Snow trailing behind her and Henry still at her side, and they walk into the cool twilight stillness together. She doesn’t watch Regina’s back, doesn’t watch her as she strides across the lawn, a lonely figure silhouetted against the darkening blue of the sunset.

 

No one is outside, no sign remaining of the explosion but debris strewn across the grounds of the tavern and a hollowed out metal husk of _something_ that Emma doesn’t stop to try and identify. She can see fairy lights in the distance, hovering as though they’re waiting and flitting forward only once Regina steps out ahead of Emma and shifts away from the disaster site.

 

“How’s your arm?” Emma asks Henry in a low voice, kicking aside a chunk of wall as they round the side of the tavern back to the path.

 

He shakes his head. “It’s fine. I don’t feel anything.”

 

But he’s still crying, tears spilling from his eyes and dripping down to a cut slashed across his cheek, and Emma recognizes his distress for what it is- for its familiarity. She stops and bends down in front of him, taking his good hand in hers. “Henry, none of this was your fault.”

 

He blinks away tears but more emerge. “Grumpy’s dead because of me. Because I-“

 

“Because of _her_ ,” Emma cuts in swiftly, and she dares to glance at the queen, who watches them both expressionlessly, standing very still a few feet away from them. “You can’t be responsible for what she does, kid. Not even when she thinks she’s doing it for you.” She squeezes his hand. “It’s a hell of a lot to put on your shoulders, Henry.” It’s meant both to rebuke and to goad but Regina doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t do anything but wait silently at the edge of the path, observing them without reaction.

 

When she does speak, it’s only to demand in a tone just barely subdued (and Emma might even be imagining the thread of uncertainty winding through it, and she mentally censures herself for seeking it out), “The resistance, Miss Swan.”

 

“Yeah.” Henry is snug at her side and when Snow reaches for her hand, she takes it, and the three of them enter the mines together.

 

Regina follows, her footsteps on stone echoing behind them.

 

\--

 

The open room where the resistance meets is deserted, dotted with empty chairs and flickering lamps and a single table left bare in the center of the room. “There’s no one here,” Snow says unnecessarily. “Maybe they’ve moved somewhere else?”

 

Emma shrugs. “I haven’t been back here in a while,” she says, and maybe it’s a tiny bit for the benefit of the queen now circling the room, one hand glowing with her own personal flame as she surveys the rocky pathways out into the rest of the mines.

 

“He’ll be here,” the queen utters with certainty, and then he _is_ , just like that, popping into existence in front of Emma and Snow with a delighted trill.

 

“The whole family’s here! What a delight,” he titters, and Snow’s hand tightens in Emma’s. “Oh, yes, and Her Majesty too.” He beckons to Regina with a wiggle of his fingers and gets a fireball hurled at him for his efforts. It splits in half and burns a path in the air around them all, joining together on the other side of their group and crashing ineffectually into a stone wall. “Better watch your aim, Majesty. We wouldn’t want to hurt your dear beloved, would we?”

 

“Emma, step _back_!” Regina orders, impatient, and Emma responds automatically, angling backward to avoid the next attack.

 

The returning fireball is transformed into an assortment of white feathers that flutter to the ground in front of them, and Emma winces at the heat she can feel nearly searing them. “Take Henry and get back against that wall,” she murmurs to Snow, gesturing toward the wall beside the underground path back to the castle. If they need to run, they’ll at least be running to safety.

 

For a moment, the idea of taking Henry and Snow and fleeing back home crosses her mind again, to leave Regina behind for her vendetta-

 

-But no, it’s _their_ vendetta, and she touches on the fury she’s barely allowed herself to acknowledge until now, the rage with the man who’d promised Henry would be unharmed in their next attack. _One dead queen, and the little one free to be yours_ , he’d said, and even with the revulsion- it has to be revulsion, it can’t be the agony of an evil she should have expected long ago- she feels toward Regina right now, that’s still enough to raise her ire.

 

And this time, when Regina stalks forward and hurls another wave of magic at the damned little troll, Emma’s own magic escapes in a wave of fury. They both slam into the man at the same time and Rumpelstiltskin chortles as his crocodilian skin crackles with light and dark energy and peels off, leaving him in pristine condition as it puffs away. “You, too, dearie?” He offers a toothy smile to Emma, eyes glittering with malice. “And here I thought we had an understanding.”

 

Emma remembers, far too late, that she’s had a sword lashed to her waist all along. She draws it in a smooth motion, extending it until the tip is millimeters from Rumpelstiltskin’s throat, tracing the lines from his neck to his heart. “You hurt Henry.”

 

He shrugs, letting out a mad little giggle. “And you were absent a little too often for our agreement to be fulfilled.” He enunciates each word, drawing them out for maximum effect.

 

There’s a sharp breath from across the room, and Regina asks carefully- and now Emma isn’t imagining the desperate need on her face, the hope she can’t quite conceal from their eyes- “You worked with them for Henry’s sake?”

 

“Well, we also promised her your head,” Rumpelstiltskin adds before Emma can respond. His lips stretch across his face in a mocking smile. “Haven’t done that yet, either.”

 

Emma finds her voice. “I never wanted that.” But Regina’s gaze is shuttered again, her eyes cold as her magic flares up again to part the ground below the imp.

 

“Oh, dearie, you were _born_ for it,” Rumpelstiltskin drawls, vanishing and reappearing a few feet away, and he’s about to say something more when there’s a shout from the other end of the room and they all turn to see Henry struggling against Snow’s grasp. “ _No!”_ he’s shouting, eyes wild as he breaks free and hurtles toward the man. “ _No! YOU’LL RUIN EVERYTHING!”_ He stumbles on a rock protruding from the ground and topples to the floor, and Emma and Regina both run to him at once, heedless of the man watching them with laughing eyes.

 

They’re both bent on the ground over Henry, pulling him up together and protective hands running over him as he whimpers, “No. No, I want to go _home_. I want to go _now_.”

 

“Soon,” Regina murmurs, stroking his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “I promise you, this will all be over soon.”

 

In another instant, she’s gone and Emma and Henry both reel at her absence before she reappears, fingers clenched around Rumpelstiltskin’s neck as she holds him immobile against the wall. “If I could kill you, I would, you twisted little imp.”

 

He manages a smirk even in her grasp. “Oh, Majesty, I’m not the one you should fear.” And his eyes flicker back to Emma, and now Henry is sagging against her, tearful again for a reason she doesn’t understand.

 

She doesn’t understand anything right now, not Rumpelstiltskin or Henry or even Snow, who’s crying too now with an wordless sorrow that escapes Emma, and she finally asks, her voice small and without force, “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

Regina tightens her grip on him until he gasps, but his face is still greedy and eager. “Brash, mindless Emma, so naïve.” His gaze alights onto the queen holding him. “And Regina.” He laughs aloud as their eyes narrow. “I warned you twenty-eight years ago of the one who could break your curse, and you did absolutely– not a thing!” he trills.

 

“The savior,” Emma whispers, but it had all been a false hope, right? The final dream of a woman prone to idealism, when all the others had given up on this mythical savior and Emma herself had disregarded the whole idea. Emma, who’d been found on the side of a freeway twenty-eight years ago and had never known her family. _It’s impossible._

 

“On her twenty-eighth birthday, the child will return,” Rumpelstiltskin intones, his eyes closed as he sways from side to side. “The child will find you.” He tilts his head to raise an eyebrow at a very pale Snow White.  Snow White, the savior’s _mother_ , who’d been speaking obliquely of her lost daughter and her faith in her for as long as Emma had known her. _No. No. No._ “And the final battle will begin!”

 

Regina drops Rumpelstiltskin as he finishes with a triumphant shriek of merriment, the queen’s hands clenched into fists at her side as she stands back. “The savior,” she echoes Emma’s earlier words. “Emma…is…”

 

“You may be a little hardheaded,” the imp says, knocking a fist against the side of Regina’s head. She doesn’t react. “But you can’t possibly be _this_ obtuse, not with Cora’s blood in you.” He turns, sweeping his hands in Emma’s direction. “You must have suspected.”

 

And when Regina’s eyes meet Emma’s, she can see the dark despair in them, the hint of resignation that yes, she _had_ suspected the one thing that Emma had never even contemplated. “No,” Regina mutters when Emma looks away. “At first, I’d thought that you could be…but you were Henry’s mother. I didn’t…”

 

“You didn’t _want_ to believe it,” Rumpelstiltskin inserts, pressing closer to her. “You were so enamored with the savior that you didn’t dare believe that she would be your doom.” He cackles. “And thus you sealed your fate to the savior who would destroy you.” He traces the curve of her cheekbone down along her jaw to her lips in a mockery of affection. Regina doesn’t move, her eyes still burning into Emma’s. “How perfectly tragic.”

 

They’re all frozen, all caught in the impossibility of this day as Rumpelstiltskin moves freely between them, turning his attention to Snow. “And you and the boy have known all along, haven’t you, dearie?” Snow takes a step back, turning pleading eyes to Emma, and Emma looks away.

 

She can’t- she needs time to process this. She needs space, and she can feel the cave walls pressing in on her, forcing Snow and Regina and Henry and Rumpelstiltskin and her all into a tighter and tighter area until she can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t think at all because _Snow is my mother? I’m supposed to be the savior?_

_Is that all I’ve been doing here until now?_

 

No. No, she can’t subscribe to this fictional destiny and the patently unfair idea that she is somehow responsible for this kingdom, for the people and the magic and _Regina_ , Regina who hasn’t been saved at all and if that’s her responsibility then she rejects it soundly, runs from this crap and leaves this whole damn town to fend for itself.

 

_My life was never my own_ , Regina had said once, and Emma’s never identified so readily with that until this moment. She’s left with the sensation of standing still for years only to discover that she’s been on a speeding train all along, and only now can she see that it’s racing into destruction. She wants to close her eyes and open them again and find herself back in her apartment in Boston, with no knowledge of Storybrooke or magic or curses _or Regina, or Henry_ -

 

It’s Henry who keeps them moving, Henry who’s suddenly stumbling away from Emma to his mother- Henry who’s known all along, too, and brought her here to fulfill this fucked up destiny that’s been suddenly thrust upon her. She can’t think to resent him for it yet, and she holds on to his movement with her eyes like it’s a lifeline. “Emma would never destroy Mother,” he says fiercely, ducking under the queen’s arm to insinuate himself into her embrace. “Emma’s going to save her. And you can’t stop her.”

 

Emma thinks of Grumpy, how easily his neck had broken as Regina had snapped her fingers, and her face tightens as Rumpelstiltskin drawls, “Oh, I’m counting on it.”

 

He’s gone as quickly as he’d come, and Henry says again, weary and bruised beneath Regina’s protective arm, “ _Now_ can we go home?”


	21. Chapter 21

Regina doesn’t offer to send them back to the castle with magic and Emma has too much on her mind to even consider asking it, so instead she leads the way through Belle’s passage under the castle. Henry and Regina follow, Henry still tightly tucked under Regina’s arm, and Snow trails behind them all.

 

Emma doesn’t dare look back at any of them. Rumpelstiltskin’s malicious laugh is still ringing in her ears, and her mind’s eye wars between images of Snow’s paling face and Regina’s stiff back. Too much has happened today, and the picture she clings to right now is the only one that can keep her going- Regina, beaming at a little girl with a wreath crowning her head. Peace. Simplicity. Hope.

 

Three things she can’t imagine having anymore, and she gazes far into the dimly lit cavern, willing herself to clear her mind, to calm herself before she panics and runs. She can feel the urge already, the terror of _just too much_ that threatens to overwhelm her, and this time there’s no Regina to steady her and keep her going or even care if she leaves. The silence is oppressive, her thoughts suffocating, and she thinks she’d have run already if she had somewhere to go.

 

They’re nearly back to the castle when she hears a quickened pace behind her, padding along the corridor behind her with new urgency. “Emma.” Snow’s voice is low as she hurries to catch up. “I’d like to talk to you.”

 

“Not now.” She’s too focused on listening to her own breathing right now, to block out the intrusive knowledge that dogs her every step. She isn’t ready for _this_ discussion.

 

She can hear Snow’s voice crack. “Emma-“

 

“She _said_ not now!” snaps a second voice from behind them, and Emma finally turns so she can watch Regina, the queen’s eyes still dark and heavy with anger and confusion and desperation as she barks out the order at her former rival.

 

Snow’s eyes flash with equal emotion. “Oh, yes, because _you’re_ the one she needs help from right now.”

 

“She doesn’t need a mother who’s abandoned her and lied to her since,” Regina retorts, and Emma flinches at the words she hasn’t said yet, now echoing in the dark caverns around them. “What new sanctimony have you finagled to keep your conscience lily-white now, Snow?”

 

Snow takes a step forward to Emma, but she ducks away, concentrating on the road ahead of them instead of the way her…mother’s face falls. “I lost her because of you!” Righteous anger, hot and reawakened. “You took her from me, and you would try it again now, you…you evil witch!”

 

A sob rises in Snow’s throat, but Regina is unfazed, her lips curling into a smirk. “I never had to take her this time, Snow. She _came_ to me running.” Henry grabs one hand in time but the other is already lighting up with crackling magic, illuminating the shadows of Regina’s face as a malevolent smile dances across her features.

 

“Okay! Okay.” Emma rubs her temples, a new headache settling between them. “Enough already, both of you.”

 

“She’s a murderer, Emma.” The grief for Grumpy still shines in Snow’s eyes, and Emma swallows the bile that still churns in her stomach at the reminder. “Do you understand now what she’s capable of? What she’s done to you already?”

 

Regina isn’t smirking anymore, and the magic is dissipating in her hand as she clenches it into a fist. “My quarrel was always with you, Snow. You made your own decisions regarding Em-“ She pauses, inhaling deeply as the last of her magic winks out of existence. “Regarding the savior.”

 

“I don’t…I don’t have time for this right now.” Emma bites down on her lip so hard that she tastes blood. “We need to get Henry to a doctor.” She’s never been so desperate to see Frankenstein before, to get out of this claustrophobic tunnel with three pairs of eyes on her, knowing, fighting, _expecting_ her to make decisions now after today’s revelations.

 

Henry. Henry has to be their priority over these squabbles, and both of the other women start guiltily and nod, Snow shamefaced and Regina sharply determined. “Of course.”

 

They’re nearing the end of the passageway when Emma thinks to worry about Belle, imprisoned in that cell with no escape and a queen with a grudge dangerously close. It’s too late to turn back, though, and when she pushes the door open with some trepidation, the room is empty.

 

“Rumpel knew we’d come this way,” Regina notes in response to a question that Emma hasn’t asked. “He’s orchestrated everything we’ve done today. All according to his grand plan.”

 

“I thought his grand plan was killing us all in the tavern.”

 

Snow shakes her head. “Killing Regina might not break the curse.” And their eyes are all back on Emma again, anticipating…something, some magical answer as frustrating as their desire for it, and Emma quickens her pace to the door of the cell.

 

It’s unlocked, and there’s the dawning knowledge again that they’re all just following a blueprint set up by the only person in town more powerful than Regina, with an agenda they’ve barely glimpsed and can’t possibly understand. _All according to his grand plan_.

 

If Rumpelstiltskin’s grand plan involves getting Henry medical treatment, Emma doesn’t give a damn about the rest of it right now.

 

\--

 

“Stop pacing,” Regina barks out, glaring at Emma, and Emma pauses for a moment before pent-up frustration has her twitching again, her feet circling unconsciously toward one end of the room and then the other. “Miss Swan!“

 

“How do we know he’ll be safe here? Has Frankenstein ever healed anyone before? Is he going to have-“ She traces stitches across her arm, remembering a movie and a stable boy both who’d been less than encouraging pictures of the doctor’s abilities. “Can’t your magic do more?” Regina had finally been able to start the healing process on Henry once they’d made it upstairs to the doctor, but now he’s in one of the rooms sectioned off for patients, getting his arm wrapped properly and set up for the night.

 

Regina’s eyes soften the barest bit. “I know you’re concerned,” she allows. “But the doctor is quite capable. This isn’t the first time Henry’s ever been injured.”

 

“And no stitching together.” She hasn’t noticed any mysterious markings on Henry before, but she hadn’t thought to look for them until now.

 

“No stitching together.” Regina rises. “There’s no need to remain here. I have the utmost confidence in Dr. Frankenstein. And we have more urgent matters to address now.” She vanishes into Henry’s room for a moment, speaking in a low voice to the doctor, and walks out past Emma and a silent Snow without a second glance at either.

 

“What do you think she’s up to?” Snow ventures finally, after the doctor has returned to another patient and they both stop by Henry’s room. “She can’t defeat the Dark One. No one can.”

 

“I don’t know.” Henry is already asleep, favoring his left side so his heavily bandaged right arm lies awkwardly across the rest of the bed. His forehead is creased with worry even in sleep, and Emma moves to smooth his brow, crouching down beside him and laying her head down against his mattress.

 

Snow watches her, hands twisting together and apart and together again, drawing patterns against her palm with her thumb. “He wanted to wait to tell you. He didn’t think you’d accept the truth about yourself if you were told it too soon.”

 

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

 

“I thought he was right,” Snow presses on. “I should never have kept it from you, Emma. I know that now. But I thought…I also thought you needed time. And you were doing so much good without that pressure on you, without knowing about your destiny.“

 

Emma stares blankly ahead, willing herself to allow the words to wash over her as she turns to the door. _Not now not now notnow–_

But Snow keeps going, encouraged by her silence. “I always needed hope as my crutch, always needed to believe in something better to be better. But you were so strong on your own. You were so good and so quick to become the savior you didn’t know you should be that telling you would have only been a hindrance.”

 

She stumbles over her words, stifling a choked sob. “I wanted nothing more than to let you know you were my daughter, Emma! I love you so much and I _know_ , I know you’re angry with me for lying to you until now, but-“

 

And to her horror, Emma can feel the tears threatening to escape, leaking through and obstructing her throat and closing their unforgiving grip around her heart. “Stop!” she cries out. “Stop saying this, stop making excuses!” She slaps ineffectually at her wet eyes. “I don’t _care_ about that. I don’t care about the lies and the truth and the fucking destiny you all keep insisting I have.”

 

“Emma…” Snow puts a hand on her shoulder, her eyes glittering with pain. “If there’s anything I can do to make things better…I want to give you the life you’ve deserved until now. The life Regina stole from us.”

 

“No,” Emma chokes out. “No, _this_ Regina didn’t take from us.” And how many times has she heard this story from Snow, has she wondered about a daughter so readily given up for the sake of the fate of the kingdom? She’s _comforted_ Snow when the other woman had called herself selfish, she’s told her that she had no other choice…but it’s another matter entirely when she knows that she’s that daughter, that she had parents who’d claimed to love her but surrendered her all the same to an alien world where she might have died right there on the road. A decision for the good of a kingdom, not a family. Not Emma.

 

Snow had had enough faith in destiny and fate to believe that Emma would survive and return, the foretold hero. And Emma had spent twenty-eight years alone because of it, shuttled from place to place with not a soul to love or be loved by her in the meantime. “This was all you,” she whispers, and maybe it’s irrational when Snow _has_ been right, when she’s alive and healthy and back with Snow now, but she can’t stop the flood of tears that finally emerge as she dashes from the doctor’s lab and down the stairs, away from Snow’s pleading apologies and justifications.

 

She has her hand on Regina’s door before she remembers that she can’t go there, either, that Snow’s betrayal hadn’t been the first of the day. That her own betrayal had immediately followed Regina’s, and the queen would have no desire to give her her bed or embrace tonight.

 

She’s never felt so alone here before, dashing through hallways with tear-clouded eyes and knowing that there’s no one else, not a person in this castle or town who she can go to. She’s on her own again after months belonging to a family she’s loved, and it’s never felt quite this painful before, now that she knows what she might have had.

 

She’s already down the stairs and standing in the center of the hall, facing Prince Charming’s statue, when she’s able to gather her breath for the first time, to blink the tears from her eyes and focus on the features carved out of stone before her. She has his face, she thinks, more so than Snow’s. She can’t say for sure that they share complexions when his is grey and stiff, but their eyes are the same, and their noses, and lips…

                                                                                             

She touches her own mouth, studying the pattern of his. The smile softening his features, building satisfaction out of his determination. He had been facing Regina right then, hadn’t he? He’d known that they’d lost and the curse was on its way, the evil queen standing before him about to turn him to stone, and he’d smiled.

 

She understands with a sudden flash of insight. _Because of me_. Charming’s face is the face of a man who’s managed to complete his final task, to secure away the child meant to save them all. His faith is as unwavering as Snow’s without the stifling _presence_ of it, and she steps forward to press a hand against his chest.

 

The first time she’d seen him, she’d mistaken his clothing for armor, hard and the silver of stone, but now she can tell that it’s only an open shirt, vulnerable and exposed. He hadn’t been prepared for a battle the day he’d been turned into stone. He’d only been thinking of his newborn daughter.

 

His smile is for her and now she’s leaking tears again, crying at something that isn’t even _real_ , a father she’s never met who’s just as distant now as ever, who’d wholeheartedly believed that sending her away had been the right thing to do. Who would smile for twenty-eight years for the daughter who’d managed to escape his fate.

 

She doesn’t want the burden of this destiny thrust upon her, doesn’t want to be reduced to the deus ex machina of the curse rather than a human being, a woman who’d been in control of her own life and decisions until now. She doesn’t want to be an _object_ , and maybe it’s just as terrifying to contemplate saviorhood as it is the fact that Snow and Henry have known all along, that they’ve been looking at her through the lens of her purported destiny until now.

 

How much of their love and acceptance and eagerness has been about her, and how much has been about her destiny? How much of their image of her has been dependent on her breaking the curse?

 

How much of their love will she lose when they finally realize that she has no idea how to break it, that she’s no savior, after all?

 

She inhales one deep, shuddering breath and retreats back up the stairs, trudging toward the room that is still hers, even though she hasn’t slept there in weeks. She’s tired, drained physically and emotionally, and it’s probably time to follow Henry’s lead and collapse into a bed for the night.

 

The sun must have set sometime during their trip through the mines and the upper floors of the castle are dimly lit and nearly empty- emptier, in fact, than Emma’s seen them in a long time, and she furrows her brow, too tired to put much thought into that oddity. Had there been any guards by the castle doors, or outside the doctor’s rooms?

 

No, there hadn’t. The castle has been entirely bereft of servants of any kind since they’d returned.

 

If there’s a coup in the works, Regina should know, and Emma sighs as she pushes open the door to her room, resigning herself to another confrontation she isn’t prepared for. She just needs some water, something to force her awake, and she reaches out blindly in the dark of her room to find her way along the wall to her bathroom when she hears the sound of another person breathing.

 

“Who’s there?” But now she can make out the figure on the bed, silhouetted in the moonlight trickling into the room, her hair free from its elaborate coif and her hands tight around herself as Regina rises from the bed to meet her. “Regina-“

 

Regina crosses the room in quick steps and then she’s cradling Emma’s face in her hands as she leans forward, pressing her lips against Emma’s so quickly that Emma can only stand still without response. Her eyes close despite herself as she kisses Regina back with an urgency matching the queen’s, forcing her lips apart and drinking her in desperately, tasting her with a helplessness she can’t hold back.

 

Regina is an addiction, one she’s needed today more than ever- and that’s halfway _because_ of Regina, because the woman still holding her so delicately as though she might shatter in her grasp should be out of reach to her forever; and whatever this is, Emma knows it can’t last, knows that it’s an illusion in the moonlight that will vanish again in the harsh light of day- and she can’t let go, can’t keep herself from clinging to the other woman and the fleeting comfort her embrace offers.

 

She winds one arm around Regina’s waist, blinking back new tears as they come, and with her other hand strokes the queen’s hair, reveling in the gentleness of this final embrace as Regina’s lips attack hers again and again, the insistence of her kisses in direct contrast to the soft hands still pressed to her cheeks. “Please,” Regina whimpers, and Emma doesn’t understand, doesn’t comprehend what Regina wants, why she won’t stop kissing her, why she can taste the salty tang of tears on her lips with every touch of the queen’s. “Please, I want…”

 

Emma catches a tear with her thumb and wipes it away, smoothing hair matted with tears behind Regina’s ears as she struggles to recall why she shouldn’t. “What is it?” she murmurs against Regina’s mouth, and Regina shudders against her as she kisses her again, chaste and repeatedly as though there’s something she’s taking from Emma every time they touch, something she needs more than life itself.

 

“Freedom,” Regina whispers. “Freedom from this wretched curse at last.” She attacks Emma with teeth and tongue this time, and Emma’s too startled to respond in any way but to mold herself against the queen, the tears now running freely down Regina’s cheeks against her fingers and her heart threatening to burst as she manages to take in short breaths before Regina’s lips envelop her again. “Freedom from queenship. Freedom from being loathed…” The tips of her fingers are moving in unconscious circles within Emma’s curls as she murmurs, “Freedom from being loathsome.”

 

“Regina.” It’s a sigh and a moan and a release all in one, and Emma wants to sag against Regina, wants to pull her down onto her bed and hold her forever. Instead she presses her cheek to Regina’s neck, pulling free from Regina’s hands as she buries her face in the queen’s shoulder and they sway together in the moonlight. “Regina, what are-“

 

“Why won’t it work?” Regina demands brokenly, and she’s kissing the top of Emma’s head now, kissing her hair and her ears and the back of neck, kissing every inch of Emma she can touch with her lips. “If you’re the savior, why won’t it break?”

 

“Oh. _Oh_.” And now Emma really does guide them to the bed, too weary to stand anymore with the weight of this. She sits, twining her fingers with Regina’s as she presses her lips against Regina’s forehead, feeling the other woman trembling against her skin. “True Love’s Kiss, right?”

 

“Can break any curse,” Regina rasps through her tears. “But not mine.” She pulls their intertwined fingers to her lips and presses another kiss to the place where Emma’s palm meets her wrist, and Emma can still feel tears sliding down along her arm. “Not this. Not for us.”

 

Her eyes are agonized, reflecting moonlight and despair and craving, craving for the freedom Emma’s only ever wanted to gift her with; and now she knows that the tools are in her hands but they’re not _working_ , not saving the fallen queen or the savior who would love her. She dives forward, smashes her lips against Regina’s with the same need and wills magic to come forth, to do whatever it’s supposed to do to end this curse.

 

_Okay, destiny, you win. I give up_. _Do your worst._ But destiny doesn’t take hold and soon bitter tears are slipping down her face, mingling with Regina’s where they’re still pressed together, and Emma pulls away to tilt her forehead to meet Regina’s as she sighs out her defeat.

 

“True Love’s Kiss, huh,” she finally thinks to whisper, cupping a hand against the fine curve of Regina’s jaw. “True…love?”

 

Regina shifts away from her, her gaze suddenly wary under the sheen of tears. “I thought it was worth an attempt.”

 

“Mm.” And it’s unfair to do this now, now when she can finally summon up the image of Regina twisting a hand and ending Grumpy’s life on a whim, when she finally remembers the horrific realization that Regina is _evil_ , but it’s just as unbearable to see her at her most vulnerable and keep a truth Emma can’t deny from her. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

 

Regina turns back, her eyes very bright. “Oh?”

 

“I’m just…” Emma stares down at their joined hands. “I never wanted to hurt you.” She pauses. “Well. I did at first. But not once we…once you…” She struggles to find impossible words and settles instead on, “And you still thought True Love’s Kiss would work, even after what you know about me now?”

 

Regina is staring at her when she looks up again. “I don’t think I could ever stop loving you, Emma,” she says quietly, and they sit in silence for a long moment, Emma toying with Regina’s fingers instead of speaking.

 

When she finally does say something, it’s regretful but firm. “You killed Grumpy.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You’ve killed a lot of people, haven’t you.”

 

Regina’s hands are still loose in hers. “Yes.”

 

“I thought you’d changed. For Henry and…”

 

“And for you,” Regina curls her fingers around Emma’s, stilling them. “I would have done anything for you.”

 

Emma’s voice is hoarse. “Would have?” It’s the one thing she fears even more than giving up on Regina- Regina giving up on herself- and she’s out of ideas, out of reasons for Regina to change that don’t involve promises she can’t keep.

 

She receives only a sad smile in return. “I don’t think it’s enough, do you? It’s time I became something better for myself.” Regina shakes her head. “I despise this kingdom and I despise Snow White-“ She barks out an caustic laugh. “ _-Your mother_ -“ And Emma nearly laughs in turn at the absurdity of it all before Regina’s face grows serious again. “But I’ve grown sick to death of despising myself.”

 

“Regina…” And she _has_ to be honest, she can’t lead her on; and for herself and for Henry and for Regina, she can’t base their relationship on her expectations. Not again, not after what had happened this last time she’d believed too deeply and fallen prey to hope. “I can’t…”

 

Regina kisses her again, skims her hands under Emma’s shirt as though she’s memorizing the warmth of her skin against hers, and Emma closes her eyes and thinks of Regina staring down at the dwarf’s body, thinks of her lashing out with anger at someone the queen herself had thought innocent days before.

 

He’d been as innocent as Emma, anyway, involved with the resistance but not the bomb they’d set off, and he’s the reason Regina and Henry had survived when the…

 

The…

 

Something is niggling at her, something that doesn’t quite add up, and she pulls away from Regina to ask, “That explosion…it wasn’t magical, was it?”

 

Regina shakes her head, frowning at her line of thought. “If there had been magic in it, Henry and I would have been gone the moment it struck. Rumpel did mean for us to survive it, it seems.”

 

“But it…” She remembers stepping over a metal shell as they’d left the tavern and thinking little of it, too distracted by everything else going on to worry about the machinery that had caused it all. “It wasn’t from this world.” The design had looked old-fashioned from the glimpse she’d gotten and the explosion hadn’t been half as devastating as movie bombs were. “But if it wasn’t magical, then that means…”

 

_Technology_. And there’s only one person in this world with any access to technology and the know-how to put a bomb together, and she’s off the bed and running for the door before she can say another word, Regina right behind her as she makes the same connection and they both fly down the stairs toward Frankenstein’s hospital-cum-laboratory, only one thought on their minds.

 

“ _Henry!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been busy with rl exhaustion and I won't be around enough tomorrow to update then, so a slightly early chapter for you! I apologize that I haven't gotten to replying to the comments from last chapter yet- they've been wonderful and you're all wonderful for leaving them!! but I'm just barely awake enough right now to do one thing and I figured that, given the choice between responses and the final edits for this update, you'd choose the latter~ I will get to them before the next update, hopefully this weekend! Thank you all and I hope you enjoyed <3


	22. Chapter 22

The castle is still abandoned, not a maid or guard or servant in sight as they fly down the stairs to the hospital. Something is changing- has been changing all day, perhaps, since the moment they’d stepped out to their carriage that morning and sealed their fates- and when they finally race through the main hall to the wing where the doctor has Henry for the night, Emma notices out of the corner of her eye that even the statues seem less stony, a red glow suffusing a few of the most distant ones.

 

There’s no time to explore that now or consider its ramifications, though, not when Frankenstein has betrayed them and their son is in danger, and she bursts into the doctor’s laboratory a moment before Regina, her sword out and drawn in a single motion. “Henry!”

 

Silence.

 

“Frankenstein, you fucking bastard!”

 

There’s nothing, and Regina pulls ahead of her with fire half-trailing from her hands as she leads the way into the room where Henry had been sleeping. She lets out a low curse at the empty bed. “He has him.”

 

“Frankenstein?”

 

“No.” Regina holds an arm out in front of Emma, stopping her from moving any closer to the bed, and only then does Emma glimpse the small, ivory-colored card lying across Henry’s pillow. It’s decorated with a single ornate “R,” and Emma feels her heart stop in her chest. “Don’t touch it,” Regina murmurs. “It’s enchanted to transport only its bearer.”

 

“Rumpelstiltskin.” Her heart skips a beat, and she pushes Regina’s arm aside as the other woman shakes her head and turns to face her. Regina’s hand is gentle against her cheek, tracing hard lines that relax and smooth out at the queen’s touch. Emma sucks in air through her nose with a sharp inhalation, turning to graze her lips against velvety fingers as she raises her own hand to cover Regina’s. “Then we’ll go together,” she says, but the other woman is already anticipating her argument and shaking her head.

 

“He wants me, Emma. Not you.” She manages a wan smile. “I need you to be here for Henry when he returns.” _When he returns_ , not _when we return_ , and Emma leans into Regina’s palm, stubborn denial rising in her throat. She refuses to accept that, refuses to write off any of them right now or ever. She’d rather die. She’d rather flee. For all the evil Regina has done, for all the evil she might do in the future, Emma can’t imagine existing in a world without her.

 

And _that_ is a problem in itself, one from which there won’t be a reprieve even after this crisis is over and done with. She entertains thoughts of running again, as she has a hundred times in the past few months, escaping this town and the burdens of good and evil and saviors and queens. Once she’d thought it could be the three of them, rebuilding their family together far from the trappings of a fairytale land. Now it’s Regina she yearns to flee more than anyone, Regina who’s the ultimate threat to whatever future she wants to build and to the conscience she needs to assuage once more.

 

“Henry is…Henry is everything,” Regina is saying, and Emma nods fervently. That they agree on, at least, at the core of their being. “He comes first. You both come first,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “This is what I have to do, Emma. There’s no other choice.”

 

No. The same desperation that she’d felt upon being named savior resurfaces, couched in _I have to save Regina_ again, but it’s less burden now. Instead it’s a raw need, sheer desire so palpable that she can taste it. “Henry needs you to be there for him too, so if this is some kind of desperate gamble where you give yourself up for him, you can take that and shove it-“

 

“ _Emma_ ,” Regina whispers, her eyes very bright, and the tips of her fingers flutter against the blonde’s lips for a final moment before she’s stepping forward and the same hand is on Emma’s chest, shoving her back as Regina strides to the bed. Emma stumbles, catching herself a moment too late because Regina is already reaching out to touch Rumpelstiltskin’s calling card with a single finger, her back straight and her elegant neck twisted just enough that her gaze is still on Emma. It’s warm and it’s steel, affectionate and resolute at once, and Emma grabs for her arm as a gold shimmer envelops the queen and she fades from sight.

 

She’s scrabbling at the bed, struggling to find a second card or another clue or _something_ , anything that will take her to her family, and she runs blindly for the castle doors before she realizes that she has no idea where Regina might have gone. Regina’s back in the lion’s den, and now both Henry and his mother are at the mercy of a creature who has easily manipulated them all to serve his means.

 

“Dammit!” She squints out into the distance, her eyes adjusting slowly to the moonlit night, but there’s nothing out there. No Henry. No Regina. Nothing but stillness and the distant howl of a wolf.

 

She can’t remember the last time she’s felt this helpless, this _useless_ \- not in all the time she’s spent in Regina’s land, not in the past years of self-sufficiency. There are people she cares about now, people who she’d do anything to keep safe. People whose deaths would destroy her completely. And now she’s alone in a castle with no way to find them and save them in time or die trying, and she blinks back new frustrated tears as she leans against the door, scrambling for ways to shut down the fears that make her weak.

 

Or…not alone, not even now. She stands in the main hall, catching her breath, when a voice behind her speaks quietly. “Regina has that enchanted mirror.” _Snow_. Snow is still here, and as much as Emma doesn’t know how to react to her newfound mother, she’s grateful to see her all the same.

 

“Snow…” She turns, and Snow shrugs feebly.

 

“I heard you run past, and I saw…” Snow nods back toward the hospital. “I’m so sorry, Emma.” There’s no resentment in her eyes for Regina, no judgment or even the pleading that had made Emma so uncomfortable earlier. There’s only compassion and determination and Emma walks forward, drawn to the woman who had been a friend not too long ago.

 

Warm arms wrap around her, a hand stroking the back of her neck, and Emma sags against Snow, the tension and the fear diminishing as Snow murmurs quiet comfort into her cheek. “You’re going to save them,” Snow whispers, and it’s with that same certainty that she says _you’re the savior_ but now Emma clings to it, takes comfort in faith she doesn’t deserve and may never live up to, because Regina is out there and she’s going to try to die for Henry and Emma can’t, _can’t_ lose them, can’t stand by and do nothing as the two people in the universe she loves most await destruction.

 

_The mirror_. Snow’s first words penetrate the fog of grief and terror that wraps around her mind and she breathes, straightening again to turn to the stairs. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go find Regina.”

 

She takes a step forward and Prince Charming’s stone face blinks at her, and Emma stares, momentarily distracted. “Did he just…”

 

Snow nods, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “The curse is weakening.” She smiles once, and it’s so full of hope and promise that Emma can’t look away. Snow’s hope is like a drug, one Emma’s never had and can’t imagine. Love will be her undoing, not her strength, not in a world where True Love’s Kiss doesn’t work for the savior and love for a child will be the reason a mother is lost. “The savior is beginning to believe.”

 

“Believe in what?” Her head is spinning with bitterness and uncertainty, and she inhales a gulp of air. “Myself?”

 

Snow tilts her head, watching as Emma flushes at the knowing attention. “Let’s just go look at that mirror.”

 

\--

 

Regina is a picture of confidence from where she stands at the base of a small incline near the edge of town, glaring up at Rumpelstiltskin with scathing contempt. Behind him, higher on the knoll just before it turns back to forest, are Frankenstein and Jefferson, Henry bound and gagged between them with a glowing magical rope. His eyes are wide with terror as he struggles toward his mother, arms fighting to free themselves and reach for her. “It’s all right, Henry,” Regina is saying as the mirror flickers to show her to Emma and Snow. “You’re going to be fine.”

 

Jefferson snorts in response, and Regina glances to him, curling her lip with practiced disdain. “Well, this does bring back memories,” she says dryly. “And clarifies quite a bit. I was naïve to have ever trusted you, Frankenstein.”

 

“You promised me freedom in this world for my allegiance,” Frankenstein calls out, and Emma smirks internally when she sees him back up as Regina’s gaze sweeps over him. “But you didn’t make this curse. This has all been according to Rumpelstiltskin’s design, and he’s the one who holds the reins of power here.” He tilts his head, smug again as Regina seethes. “You’ve never been anything more than a pawn.”

 

Rumpelstiltskin cackles with delight. “Indeed, Majesty. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

 

Regina’s eyes darken, and Snow twitches from her spot behind Emma at the mirror. “She’s going to kill them all,” she says, shaking her head.

 

“We can hope,” Emma says grimly. Snow looks at her askance, but Emma can’t muster up any guilt in response. For these three, Emma would condone murder, and Henry fighting with his bindings in the background only firms that resolution. They must have been the ones who’d been behind the original resistance and behind this one, the ones orchestrating Henry’s kidnapping twice and the bomb that would have killed dozens if not for the shield Emma’s magic had thrown up. Regina may be the official villain of this fairy tale, but she isn’t the only one, and Emma isn’t even entirely sure that she’s any worse than a couple of men who would manipulate and murder and target a child.

 

She needs to go to them now, to somehow even the odds and snatch Henry away before Regina does something irreversible to retrieve him. Whatever Rumpelstiltskin has planned today, Emma knows instinctively that it will be the end and the culmination of all his prior plans for them. She needs to-

 

“This is my fault,” Snow murmurs, and it’s sorrowful enough to break through the shroud of panic and fury still clouding Emma’s mind.

 

“What?”

 

Snow shakes her head. “I’ve been so focused on myself today that we all walked into a trap. First at the tavern, then again in Henry’s room.” She squeezes trembling hands together. “I was so glad to be _free_ and for you to know… I should have sat by and given you the space you needed, not chased you off so Dr. Frankenstein could take Henry.” She musters up a sad smile. “I was selfish again, just as I was when the curse came to be and I let you go.”

 

In the mirror, Regina is snapping something scornful Jefferson’s way, proud and unbent despite their son still bound in their hands, and Emma wonders if she can summon up enough magic to teleport away from this conversation and into that one.

 

Apparently not. Her magic is as unreliable as ever, of course. “It’s not selfishness,” she says finally. “I can’t blame you for sending me away. You had no other choice.” She’s supposed to break this curse, and if she’d been affected by it, she’d still be a baby, trapped within it and helpless. There would have been no Henry, no Regina- or, rather, a very different Regina- and as much as she sorely regrets some of what they’ve been through together, she can’t imagine living life without ever knowing it either.

 

“I was meant to come with you,” Snow murmurs. “The wardrobe we sent you away in would only hold one. And then I went into labor moments after the curse was cast. Charming brought you to safety just as Regina arrived to kill you.”

 

“That’s real classy, Regina,” Emma mutters, eyeing the woman in the mirror with renewed misgiving.

 

Snow puffs out a tiny laugh. “I’m sure the irony hasn’t escaped her now.” She touches tentative fingers to Emma’s shoulder. “You were meant to be her undoing, Emma. No one dreamed that it would be like this.”

 

“No.” And she doesn’t shift from Snow’s touch this time. “I guess not.” She hadn’t meant to be anyone’s undoing, hadn’t meant to do anything here except survive and be sure that her son was safe in this ridiculous magical world. She’s spent her whole life running, and now she’s been brought to a halt in the last place she’d have ever expected.

 

And in return, she’s been given things that are too much to comprehend. A family, a mother her own age who looks at her like she’s going to save the world. A little boy who calls her Mom and had believed in her and in return she’d left him alone in a hospital bed with someone she should have known better than to trust. And Regina. _Regina,_ who’d embraced her own destruction for Emma’s sake, who’d murdered a man and still thinks that she’s redeemable (and how can she be, how can an evil queen change entirely because of someone as unremarkable as Emma Swan, and how can Emma love her so fully even now? _I don’t think I could ever stop loving you, Emma,_ says Regina _,_ and Emma grasps that love and returns itin full to a woman who will break her heart a hundred times over before they’re done. _I don’t think I could ever stop loving you, Regina_ , she thinks in response, and wonders how resilient Regina’s heart will be once broken again) and is somehow determined to keep going.

 

How does Snow still believe in her? How can Henry? How many people here are relying on a screwed up orphan who’s never mattered before and doesn’t know how to _stay_?

 

Snow’s fingers are tightening on her shoulder and Emma focuses on the mirror, her mouth very dry as Rumpelstiltskin leans forward. “A trade, Regina.” He licks his lips. “You alone can still leave this realm, and you will retrieve the item we send you for. And then we will discuss the terms of your son’s release.”

 

Regina cocks an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Aren’t you going to say please?”

 

Rumpelstiltskin’s smirk widens, and he glances behind him only once, waggling his own eyebrows at Henry. “I don’t think we need pleasantries today, do you?”

 

Regina’s eyes narrow, but she isn’t looking at Rumpelstiltskin or his cronies as Jefferson steps forward. Her eyes are on Henry alone, and Emma can nearly feel it as Regina forces the comforting smile onto her face for his benefit, as she softens only for him.

 

Jefferson removes the hat from his head with a mocking bow to Regina and spins it. Magic flows from it, spinning in winding spirals around the hat, expanding with every turn until a hole is torn into space and time as magic whirls around it, unwavering.

 

“No,” Emma whispers, and Regina leaps into the portal, her eyes never leaving Henry as he shouts a protest from beneath the magic vines wrapped around his mouth. The hat keeps spinning, the doorway to another realm still yawning open after Regina vanishes, and she’s back before Emma remembers how to breathe again, quietly resigned as she proffers the item for them.

 

It’s a gleaming red apple, a single bite taken from it, and Snow gasps in recognition. “That’s…”

 

And even Emma can identify it. “…the poison apple,” she finishes, bringing an unconscious hand up to touch Regina’s form in the mirror. There’s no time to go to her now, no way to save the day, but she’s already moving again, already shoving past Snow to the door to the bedroom as Rumpelstiltskin speaks again.

 

“A life for a life.” She can hear the leer in his voice. “You have a taste of forbidden fruit, and I bring your son back to the savior unharmed.”

 

And she turns back just long enough to see Regina lift the apple to her lips and murmur, “We have a deal, then,” and bite into the cursed fruit, chewing it with pursed lips as her eyes return to Henry.

 

He’s smiling.

 

It’s enough to stop Emma in her tracks and she stares at him, stares at the equally smug smile on Rumpelstiltskin’s face as Regina falls to the ground, stares at Snow who’s suddenly smiling, too. “Go to her, Emma,” Snow murmurs. “I don’t know what Rumpel is planning. He must know that this wouldn’t be enough for long, not with you here.”

 

True love. A kiss. It’s enough to end a sleeping curse, enough to break a curse over a kingdom, enough to save the day here all the time except when it isn’t, when it’s two women who are too damaged to ever find true love in each other and for whom happy endings were never written. Rumpelstiltskin is counting on it, too, Emma knows suddenly, and Henry behind him as well. They all believe, but they know _nothing_.

 

She makes her way down the hall to the stairs, unable to look Snow in the eye. She’s going to retrieve Henry, to find a place for Regina to be secured, and Snow can’t know that that’s all. Not when her eyes are still alight with faith in Emma and the victory of the ignorant. Emma can’t crush her and her fragile hopes, even now.

 

“Wait!” Snow calls, and Emma turns back, stares at the woman standing at the base of Charming’s statue again. Except it isn’t a statue anymore, just a man still silvery and glowing as he rocks shakily on his platform. Snow is staring at him with such unreserved affection that Emma’s breath catches in her throat, sour envy flooding her at their obvious, easy love. None of that for Regina, none for Emma. “Emma, if there’s anything I can do…” She shakes her head, tearing her eyes from Charming’s to study Emma’s face again. “Are you okay?”

 

_No_. She smiles at Snow in response, and it strikes her at last that she won’t see her again.

 

She’s failed so many times now, fallen in love and found everything she’s ever dreamed of and still failed to keep it. She hasn’t been able to help Regina be good, not really, only pushed her too hard until she’d killed a man. She hasn’t been able to keep Henry safe, she hasn’t been able to either defeat or aid the resistance to a noble end. She’s met her mother and discovered at once that she’s never going to be able to live up to the image of her Snow holds in such high esteem, curse or not. She hasn’t even been capable of true love, it seems.

 

She’s never going to be enough for the people she cares about. She’s spent twenty-eight years quietly dreaming of love and family, and it’s proven to be nothing more than a weakness. And she’s done, done trying and destroying and watching others be destroyed for their faith in her.

 

She’s saving Henry and leaving this town tonight before anyone else suffers from the disappointment she is.

 

“I just need to get something before I go,” she says finally. “Look…Snow… Take care of Regina, okay? Keep her safe.”

 

She can see Snow’s brow furrow in confusion, realization not quite setting in yet, and she flees before her mother understands.

 

\--

 

The bug hadn’t been made to drive on fields and dirt roads, and it sputters in complaint as she guides it down the path from the castle, listing to one side and then the other on the too-small road through the woods. She focuses on keeping the car in one piece, on making sure she doesn’t wind up in a flipped-over car in the middle of the woods, on anything but the home she’s driving away from with every acceleration.

 

There’s no time to wallow in regret, no time to be weak and selfish again and return to the life she’s been living here. There’s only her hands tight on the steering wheel and her feet on the accelerator and her eyes watching each turn in the road as her headlights illuminate them.

 

She reaches the edge of town in minutes, too quickly, too soon- and how can it be so easy to leave a place that has been so necessary to her being?- and she pulls to a halt just before the town line before she steps out of the car. Frankenstein and Jefferson are gone, only Rumpelstiltskin left by the knoll, a hand on Henry’s shoulder as her son squirms impatiently.

 

“Ah, there you are, dearie.” A smile, and the bindings fall from around Henry. “We’ve been waiting.”

 

“Mom!” And then Henry’s in her arms, wrapped so tightly around her that she can’t breathe again, tears stopping to clog her throat and mist up her eyes. “You’re here.”

 

“I’m here.” Emma crouches down in his embrace to meet his eyes. “I need you to get into the car, okay? I’ll be right there with your mother.”

 

He grins gleefully, and Emma’s heart pounds in her chest. “True Love’s Kiss, right? You’re going to save her!” He doesn’t wait for a response before he’s dashing off to the car, pulling open the door to clamber into the passenger seat.

 

“Well, then.” Rumpelstiltskin rubs his palms together, his own glee dark with malice and mockery. “You do have a curse to get to breaking, don’t you?”

 

She stares at him. “Why the hell do you want the curse broken? Didn’t you make it?”

 

Rumpelstiltskin smiles beatifically. “That, dearie, is for me to know, not you. Suffice it to say that we have common goal here today.”

 

His eyes gleam with hungry impatience, and _he_ is pretty much the only one here she feels some satisfaction in telling the truth to. “Sorry to disappoint, but True Love’s Kiss? Not so much in the cards for Regina and me.” She dares look down at last to look at the queen.

 

Rumpelstiltskin must have rearranged her position with magic, because she isn’t crumpled on the ground anymore. Instead, she’s laid out flat on her back, her eyes closed and her hands folded over her stomach, her face serene in sleep. Emma’s seen her like this countless times before, has been curled up next to her in bed as she stretches out like she runs the world (which, yes, fair point), and she can’t stop herself from dropping to the grass beside her, stroking her knuckles against Regina’s face. “We’ve tried it,” she murmurs. “It doesn’t work.”

 

“Well, of course it didn’t,” Rumpelstiltskin says, whipping his matted hair from side to side in a shake of his head. “The curse has been flawed from the start. Casting error, not writing error, I’m sure.” He laughs merrily, and Emma grits her teeth and keeps her attention on Regina and the smooth skin under her fingers. “Regina was never cursed, you see.”

 

“What does that even mean?”

 

Rumpelstiltskin cocks his head. “The people were cursed to repeat each day, to be nothing more than her forced servants- until a child directly of the savior’s blood arrived in town and put a crimp in that, of course,” he amends. “The kingdom itself was cursed into another realm. But Regina has never been included into the curse. She’s only the caster who controlled it. And True Love’s Kiss wouldn’t work against the one who’d cast the spell or what would ever be the purpose of casting curses, if there were someone in your life you loved?” He’s laughing that awful laugh again but now Emma is frozen, her eyes on him again as she pieces through what he’s saying.

 

“So you’re saying…Regina had to be cursed, too. And that’s what _this_ is about?” She gestures to the woman sleeping beside her, frowning.

 

“Yes! Yes!” He claps his hands again, delighted. “The savior comprehends at last! Now…” He does a grotesque imitation of a kiss, pursed lips together blown to Emma, and pops out of view as she glowers at him.

 

Henry pokes his head out of the car. “Mom?” he ventures, but now her eyes are on Regina again, warmth spreading through her as hope revives within her again, stronger than ever. She’s terrified, terrified of losing it again, and before she can dwell on this new, dangerous kindling of optimism, she plunges downward and kisses Regina’s lips one last time.

 

She doesn’t pull away, reluctant to end this final contact with the other woman before she runs again, reluctant to see that she’s failed once more, and she closes her eyes, her lips still resting against Regina’s. She doesn’t budge even when magic vibrates around them and the lips beneath her part and Regina heaves a frantic gasp, even when Regina’s grasping onto her and she’s pulling her up back to a sitting position as they kiss again and again and again and tears finally leak from Emma’s eyes.

 

“Emma,” Regina breathes against her lips, and Emma opens her eyes at last, pulls away from Regina to gaze into eyes that already know too much only from the despair of her kiss. “You need to take Henry with you,” Regina murmurs, nuzzling the crook of her neck, and then she straightens, sitting back and watching as Emma staggers to her feet, startled.

 

“How did you…?”

 

Regina smiles at her, tranquil and sad at once in the light of the streetlights above them. “I love you both.”

 

And now Emma is stumbling across paved road to her car, not daring to look back at the woman now standing and watching them go. “Emma, you did it!” Henry says, and his hair is shorter, his shirt plaid and cotton and freshly starched, but his eyes are glowing with familiar excitement. “You broke the curse!”

 

“Yeah,” she says, and she starts her car again and drives over the town line, away from the sounds of sirens and honking in the distance.


	23. Epilogue

The walk back into town is the longest she can remember. There are no carriages anymore, she knows instinctively, no roads just for horses (and she closes her eyes for a moment and remembers the wind, the power in her hands and against her thighs and Emma Swan wrapped around her as they fly through the trees and the grass- closes her eyes because that is gone for now and perhaps for always), only streets with traffic lights and cars rushing past and–

 

She doesn’t know this world, but remembers it all the same with the advent of a final stage to the curse. Had this been Rumpel’s design all along, to thrust them into this alien world? She has knowledge, suddenly, awareness of the workings of this town that she’s never seen before. She knows she can now drive a car and understands electricity and that there’s a cell phone in her purse. She knows that she’s the mayor of this town and that Snow is Henry’s teacher and that her castle is now a spacious house on Mifflin Street.

 

She knows it all, and remembers nothing of it before the moment she’d awakened in a field beneath the Welcome to Storybrookesign. Her memories are of castles and monarchy and a ten-year-old prince and a kiss that had unraveled her world. But she knows this world like an instinct, like a habit she’s had for years and never shaken.

 

She wonders if Emma would have run, had she known that the world had been changing around them.

 

 _Yes. Yes, she would_. It hadn’t been the world that had so terrified Emma; it had been the people within, the way Snow had looked at her and the way Regina herself had. _Put us back together_ , they’d pled silently, and the woman who’d nearly had a panic attack the first time Henry had called her Mom had given up the moment she’d seen their faith written across their faces.

 

And now Emma is gone, and Regina’s only solace is the knowledge that Henry is with her, that their son is safe from whatever comes next.

 

She walks slowly. There’s nothing left to return to in a lonely house that won’t feel like home, even if it had yet been a castle.

 

\--

 

They spot her from a street away, a dull roar thrumming through the crowd that sends a thrill through her spine. There had been a time when she’d enjoyed a good mob. She’s always been a faithful adherent to order, flushing out the elements of entropy in any situation and isolating them, forcing them into a structured whole. And angry mobs are chaotic by definition, begging for order to deconstruct them into individuals once more. They are anarchy, but she remains a queen.

 

Today she’s tired, though, done with battle and done with this world that has no Henry and no Emma within it. She thinks longingly of her bed- a bed she’s never slept in, but can visualize all the same, and for a moment she dares imagine Emma within it (Emma claims Regina’s a cuddler but that’s a bald-faced lie, she’s never been one to curl up into a lover’s embrace until Emma, so obviously it’s all Emma’s predilections bleeding out into both of them, as always) and she exhales sharply, once-twice-thrice, and then three dwarves are standing in front of her and brandishing pick-axes threateningly.

 

“She’s here!” one shouts, and there’s a surge of energy from the mob again, rage taking hold and driving them forward toward her, closer and closer until she instinctively reaches for her magic and finds nothing but a gaping hole within her.

 

Well, then. The dwarves deserve their vengeance, she supposes.

 

She can’t quite muster up any regret for Grumpy even now, nothing that goes beyond the way the light had dimmed in Henry’s eyes and Emma’s face had been so wet, so angry and hurt and helpless. But she understands the bitterness of loss and family and she understands these dwarves and their grief and something twinges inside of her, something she’d thought she’d shut off a long time ago.

 

She’s half disgusted with herself, half proud, and _this_ is what love has done to her, pieced her together with half the pieces gone and she doesn’t know what’s right and what’s wrong and which she really wants to be.

 

She wants–

 

–She wants Emma to look at her and not loathe them both for loving her.

 

And now the crowd is peeling in half like an angry bruise, coming apart as two people call out, “Stop, stop!” and Snow is suddenly before her, her eyes still betrayed and raw as she skids to a halt, blocking the dwarves from coming any closer. Her prince is behind her, no worse for the wear after nearly three decades of stone, and there’s an acrid taste in Regina’s mouth as she observes them. Ups and downs, it’s always been with them. Snow finds people to love as Regina loses them.

 

“Where is she?” Charming demands, Snow grabbing his wrist as he reaches for his sword, and Regina remembers suddenly that Snow had loved them too. “What have you done with my daughter?”

 

“David,” Snow murmurs, resignation already settling on her face, and Regina knows, _knows_ , that Snow already knows.

 

Easier to allow the evil queen to share the news. “Gone,” Regina says, and there’s a new shudder of rage through the horde as they piece together the simplest cause behind this turn of events. And because Regina has no intention of making anything easier for Snow White, she adds, poisonously sweet, “Or hasn’t your wife told you that already?”

 

There’s a snarl behind her, a thump against her head, and she remembers nothing more.

 

\--

 

She dreams of fire, of a room where she can barely move but the flames lick at her arms and face all the same and she’s afraid without any rhyme or reason. _Henry_ , she calls, but she’s glad he doesn’t respond, that he isn’t here with her. _Emma_ , she whispers, and she stops standing strong for one moment, allows grief to devour her at last in this quiet world where there’s nothing more than flames and solitude.

 

She awakens on an uneven bed in a dimly lit room, and for a moment she forgets herself and murmurs, “Emma?”

 

A pause, a moment of hesitation, then– “No.”

 

She recognizes the gruff, accented voice before she opens her eyes, recognizes it and swallows back her own regret and shame and _I don’t hate you/You’re a fool not to_ and says, “It’s the first day of the rest of your life. Can’t you sound even a infinitesimally bit cheerful about it?”

 

The Huntsman- no, the sheriff, she knows at once that here he’s the sheriff as certainly as she’s the mayor- doesn’t smile, doesn’t scowl, just regards her with quiet eyes that betray no deeper fury with her. She sits up, ashamed again. “Where am I?”

 

“You’re here for your own safety right now,” another familiar voice puts in, and Regina blinks and stares out through reinforced bars to where Snow stands behind the Huntsman, a hand wrapped around her other arm. “We don’t- we don’t know what to do with you now. But you’re safe here.”

 

A single eyebrow, raised at her greatest enemy. “And you’re so very concerned with my safety.”

 

Snow’s eyes settle on hers, empty but for resentment building at their corners. “She didn’t…she didn’t say goodbye, before…” She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. “All she asked me was to keep you safe.”

 

It’s easy to muster up a sneer at Snow’s face, even as her throat closes up at Snow’s words. “Bleeding-hearted fool,” she mutters. “In your place, I’d kill you where you stood.”

 

“Really?” And it’s another familiar voice. Red, long legs propped up against the sheriff’s desk as she inspects her nails. “’Cause way I see it, you had twenty-eight years to do that, and you never bothered before.”

 

Regina’s brow furrows at the sheer audacity of it. “Are you…provoking me?” She thinks of Red at the tavern, wary but not unwilling to talk, and of the girl leaning forward and conspiring with her son in easily audible whispers. Yes, she can believe audacity from Red.

 

The people around her have suddenly transformed. Henry’s Friend. Emma’s Mother. Henry’s Teacher. Emma’s- (She stops, because she can still feel the sense memory of the rage she’d felt once, at seeing Emma close enough to kiss the Huntsman, and muddled possession and need and jealousy all stirring within her enough to set her aflame at the violation even now. Would Emma have loved the Huntsman, had Regina not taken him away? What is true love, were it given so freely to just anyone? She thinks of Emma and her arms around her and no, no, they were special even if her love had broken Emma in the end.) She’s bound to these people by her foolish, noble, loving son and his mother, and the sneer fades from her face as quickly as it had come.

 

Snow clears her throat. “You’re guilty of terrible deeds,” she says, emboldened by Red’s fearlessness. “But Emma trusted you, I think. Even after Grumpy,” Her voice shakes, and that whisper of guilt is back, accompanied by disgust because since when does she give a damn about Snow White’s grief? “She had faith in you. She didn’t even believe in herself, but she believed in you.” Since Snow White’s grief is for her daughter as well, the woman they’d both loved far more than anyone else in this damnable town would ever comprehend.

 

“I’m through giving you chances to change,” she says, and Regina is glad for that reprieve, at least. There’s nothing quite like Snow’s idiotic devotion to her to stir up old bitterness once more. “But Emma isn’t, and I’ll honor that. For her.”

 

She wants to muster up scorn and sarcasm in return, but all she can think of is golden hair and a challenging grin and eyes never certain if they’re meant to be blue or green.

 

She nods stiffly, and the Huntsman gapes at them both but Snow smiles, sad and understanding, and turns for the door.

 

\--

 

Her magic is back again when she remembers to reach for it. Rumpelstiltskin has left town, Belle in tow, and the Huntsman has been fielding phone calls about it all morning. She sits silently on her cell cot, leafing through newspapers that he’s slid between the bars to her with little interest in the situation outside of her prison.

 

A purple fog had swept through the town shortly before Rumpel’s departure, enveloping every inch of space outdoors up until the town line. The Huntsman has no answers for concerned citizens, but Regina can feel power returning to her just as the phone calls begin rolling in. She doesn’t volunteer the information.

 

Her magic feels… _wrong_ , unclean in ways she’s never been bothered with before. It’s like black oil in her veins, clogging them up and leaving her heart diseased and sickly from the contact. She chokes on it, coughs it out of her system and doesn’t consider attempting to feel it again.

 

 _True Love’s Kiss_. It’s a magic beyond any other, white magic far stronger than the false enchantments of fairies and the intoxicating blackness of the Dark One. It’s pure and it’s powerful and with Emma, it had healed her heart as fully as it had broken her curse. She can’t compare her own magic to it. It feels cheap and meaningless with the knowledge of what she’d had with Emma, heavy and sluggish and ugly when she can remember breathing in that kind of energy- true and good and loving- just hours before.

 

At times, she isn’t certain that this hasn’t been a dream, a last fantasy of a woman who’d given herself over completely to darkness. Henry…Henry can’t be a delusion, not with ten years of detailed memories of love. She remembers chubby cheeks and a low gurgle the first time she’d seen him. He’d cried and cried and cried those first few days, all too aware of how terrified she’d been of him, and only once she’d stopped trying to be _strong_ , stopped trying to control him as she controlled her kingdom, had his little eyes closed and his mouth settled into something nearly like a smile.

 

She stares at tiny printed letters in black and white until they blur and she can think of Henry again, of every moment they’d had that had been real. She remembers when he’d been three and found a puppy one of the servants had been keeping in secret. He’d brought it to her room, so excited to show her the pup, and they’d fallen asleep together on her bed while waiting, one little arm curled around the dog’s body, one thumb firmly planted in his mouth. She’d been too charmed to dispose of the pet, and it had remained in the castle until that servant had been sent away years later.

 

She remembers the first time Henry had looked at her with fear, not long after his eighth birthday when he’d fallen off his first horse and broken his arm. She’d been furious in ways he hadn’t understood then, hadn’t seen from her before in their quiet idyll within her rule, and she’d hurled around magic and turned guards to stone pell-mell and had nearly killed the riding master at the time before Snow had reminded her that her son had been present. Henry had stared at her like the people did, fear that she knew would inevitably turn to loathing someday, and she’d been afraid to look him in the eye again for days.

 

She remembers nearly turning Emma to stone, that first day, and tears trickle from her eyes unbidden, turning the white of the newspaper splotchy and grey.

 

She hates this, hates regrets and self-loathing and the way she’s become so soft. She hates how hard she’s been in the past, how much evil she’s wrought and how many she’s wronged. She hates this simple town and she hates Rumpelstiltskin and she hates herself and she hates everything, everyone in the world except Emma Swan and her son.

 

And now there’s nothing left to her but their love, and she’s weary with the weight of it.

 

\--

 

Emma had loved her. It’s too much to comprehend, sometimes, too much to believe. There had been a part of her firmly convinced that the reason their kiss hadn’t worked had been because Emma’s love hadn’t been real, hadn’t been any more than misplaced affection and compassion. And once it did, once true love had been incontrovertible, Regina still can’t quite grasp it.

 

Daniel had loved her when she’d been fresh and new, damaged but still good and perhaps worthy of love. But that girl had died with him, had been replaced by a woman with sharp edges and nothing within her but a broken heart blackened by revenge. Men had been infatuated with her, women captivated by her, all her falseness wrapped in pretty dresses and a commanding presence. She’d long ago resigned herself to life without love- and later to love only from her son, love she’d known deep down would be sacrificed to her darkness, too, in time.

 

And then Emma had stumbled into her castle and clashed with her from the start, her fire overwhelming her fear until she’d been challenging Regina at every turn. Regina had been irritated and angered and perhaps a tiny bit transfixed from the start with the woman who had been utterly unpredictable in a realm where there had been nothing erratic, nothing different for twenty-eight years. She’d wanted her in her bed and dared dream of no more than that.

 

Yet Emma had loved her, had awakened her with a kiss and held her as though she’d never wanted to let go. Emma’s eyes still blaze with fire when she looks at her, but now it warms instead of destroying. Emma, who’s spent so much of her life learning never to trust and never to love had thrown her faith and her allegiance behind the least reliable option and believed in the evil queen raising her son.

 

Emma isn’t innocent, not like Regina and Daniel had once been. Not like Snow had been as a child and an adult before Regina had stripped it away from her. No, Emma had lost her innocence in childhood- a casualty of the curse that Regina both regrets for Emma’s sake and _can’t_ , not when the curse had brought her Emma and Henry both- and somehow retained her principles, her goodness, and the stubbornness to keep going. She knows now that Emma had struggled and never told her of her indecision, understands it in her split allegiances between Regina and the resistance, and she can’t blame her for it.

 

Emma might have been panicked to discover that she was the savior, but she’d been trying to save everyone since she’d entered the town, struggling to save Regina and save Henry and save the people of the town she didn’t even know all at once. She’s been the savior all along, a gift to the people around her before she’d ever been packaged up in noble names and destiny, and it’s laughable that she believes now that it’s too much when it’s all she knows to do.

 

And of all the people in the town most unworthy of saving, it’s Regina who’d been gifted the most precious piece of Emma of all.

 

\--

 

She dreams of the room of fire every night now, and sometimes she thinks she can see someone else within it, a girl with skirts whipping around her as she struggles to push away the flames. Regina remains stock-still within them, never moving or attempting to make contact.

 

Once, her mother had enveloped her in fire after she’d crossed some unspoken line Cora had set for her. She been magically spared of any burns and hadn’t shown any marks after the fact, but she remembers the way the flames had scorched her and peeled her skin away during and she’d felt as though her lungs had shriveled up and would never let her breathe without pain again.

 

This is bearable for as long as she doesn’t move, as long as she doesn’t attempt to react with this world she dreams of. The fire’s burns are only glancing, the heat bearable, and she endures it night after night as the girl sobs in the distance.

 

The girl isn’t Henry, and she isn’t Emma, and she isn’t someone they care for (except Emma seems to care for just about everyone, to save anyone she can regardless of whether they’re strangers or enemies or evil queens) but Regina still awakens with an unease she can’t name most mornings.

 

And now there’s someone in her cell with her, and when she opens her eyes she can see that it’s Snow. “Do you want me to kill you?” she demands.

 

Snow ignores the question, proffering a tub of lotion instead. “I got this salve from the apothecary. It should cool the burns.” She nods at Regina’s forearms, where blistered skin is barely visible under her blazer, and Regina tugs at her sleeves, scowling. Snow takes her arm regardless, pushing up the sleeve to apply the salve to her skin. It does lessen the pain instantly, and Regina sighs and leaves her arm in Snow’s grasp. “I remember the dreams from after my…”

 

 _My sleeping curse_ , she doesn’t say, and Regina doesn’t know what to respond, because she remembers being so bitter and believing that cursing Snow would be enough to fix her, and she also remembers Snow knocking on her door one day and bringing her missing baby back to her at the cost of her freedom. _Henry’s Grandmother. Emma’s Mother. Henry’s Tutor. Emma’s Friend._ “Thank you,” she says finally, and Snow quirks a small smile in response.

 

“We’re still not sure what to do with you,” she confesses. “I’ve talked down the dwarves and the royals- they all hate you, by the way-“

 

“Good.” She sits back, pleased.

 

Snow rolls her eyes. “But you’re the only one here who knows how to be mayor and we keep getting…paperwork, I guess? from the state, and people aren’t doing whatever jobs the curse gave them but we think they might be afraid enough of you to get their act together.”

 

“Lovely,” Regina drawls. “So you want me out there to terrorize the townfolk? Don’t tempt me like this, Snow.”

 

“I told them you helped Emma break the curse,” Snow retorts, and Regina’s arm goes limp in her grasp. “They know…well, they don’t know how much you’ve changed, but people saw you with Henry and Emma in town and you know how the villagers gossip and, well…they aren’t as distrustful of you as they might have been once. And without your magic, you aren’t the threat you might pose otherwise.”

 

Is that all it takes? A few family outings and the evil queen is human again? No, Snow must certainly have been a large part of this, and she hates to owe anything to Snow (Emma’s Mother, Henry’s Grandmother) so she narrows her eyes and says, “Without magic?”

 

“It’s a simple matter of-“ Snow begins, and then she notices that the bars of the cell have disappeared entirely and Regina leans back, smug, as Snow lets out a very un-queenly yelp. “Regina!”

 

“I have magic.” Regina channels it through her again, struggling not to show distaste on her face as she feels the blackness flow through her, and the bars reappear. “Sorry to disappoint.”

 

“I don’t understand.” And Snow is looking at her and at the bars and then at her again, wary but with a glimmer of hope.

 

\--

 

There’s some back-and-forth between royals before she’s released for good, sent back to a house she’s never truly entered and warned that she’s on strict probation. They don’t need to worry, as she doesn’t plan to leave her home. Snow delivers her paperwork and documents and she buries herself in them, discerning order from their disorder and sending them back intact. There’s simplicity to the work that she enjoys, white noise that blocks out the rest of her intrusive thoughts.

 

She wanders through a home she knows but can’t remember, traces Henry’s face in the photographs on the mantle and burrows into the bed in the master bedroom, wondering if it’s her imagination that she can catch the barest hint of Emma’s scent in there.

 

Henry’s room is smaller than his suite in her castle but it feels right all the same, packed with books and video games and a few old pieces of schoolwork lying on his desk. It isn’t real- none of it is, but her breath still catches in her throat when she catches sight of it. It could have been real, if she’d been in Emma’s world for the past twenty-eight years of the curse. It could still be real, if her son comes back to her.

 

She misses them now more than ever, now that she’s no longer locked up and any danger to Henry has been minimized by the town’s reluctant acceptance and Rumpelstiltskin’s departure. She finds herself cursing Emma some nights, hating her for bolting like she had, hating her for believing so ardently in Regina when Regina had loved her enough to attempt to live up to that faith. Hating her for giving up. (She can’t hate her, not really, but she understands her even now and hates herself because Emma won’t hate her for them both.)

 

 _Giving up_. That’s what Emma had done when she’d run. Regina surrenders to destiny by lashing out, by finding people to hate and new blame to be cast around. Emma- daring, bold, stubborn Emma- refuses to surrender, would rather run and run and run until she’s escaped destiny altogether. And yes, perhaps Regina can’t truly hate her even for that, not when she’s _Emma_ and exactly one-half of Regina’s meaning in life, but she’s bitterly, bitterly disappointed when she’s honest with herself. _Why couldn’t you fight for us?_ she wonders. It’s not fair to expect it of her, not when Emma had been fighting for them for longer even than Regina, when Regina had killed her friend just hours before she’d left; but it sears Regina nonetheless, and she buries herself in paperwork most nights so she needn’t dwell on the two absences in this house they’d never entered.

 

\--

 

She’s digging through one of her drawers one evening when she pulls out a neatly folded red jacket that isn’t hers. She recognizes it at once, presses it to her face and sobs into soft leather that feels more like Emma than anything else in the town, and only then does she feel the light weight of a small wallet in the pocket.

 

She pulls it out with desperation for some final connection to Emma, something that’s _hers_ and real, more real than memories that are too much to be true, and she scrabbles uselessly at the wallet for a moment before she can pull out the two cards tightly wedged inside. The first is a driver’s license, and it’s _Emma Swan_ , Emma’s face squinting out from the tiny picture, her hair tucked behind her ears and a smile half-formed on her face and it’s the most beautiful thing Regina has seen in three endless weeks of loneliness.

 

The second card is a neatly printed business card with Emma’s name and a phone number just below it.

 

She stares at it, wonders if Emma even has the same phone number anymore (She must have left her phone behind, if she’d even still had it after months with no charger or service, and who’s to say she’s replaced it with the same number?) but as her mind wars with itself, her hands are already reaching for the phone by her bed and removing it from the cradle, stabbing at the numbers she needs.

 

Emma picks up on the third ring. “Hello?” she says, and a single strangled breath escapes from Regina’s throat before she clicks the phone off, panting as though she’s just run a marathon.

 

The phone rings in her hands but she recognizes the number, is incapable of picking up and talking to Emma just yet, not when she can’t remember how words work and if she loves her or hates her or needs her, needs her more than anything, and why has she been away for so long?

 

The answering machine picks up the call, and Regina can hear her voice crisply identifying herself to Emma, can hear the beep and the pause, long and breathless, and then a whisper. “R-Regina?” The line cuts out, the phone disconnected, and Regina stumbles down the stairs to replay the message, again and again.

 

“Why couldn’t you fight for us?” she whispers to the shaky voice in the machine, and when she falls asleep that night, it’s on the couch, her head pillowed against Emma’s jacket.

 

\--

 

The girl is still flailing around in the fire, but she doesn’t sob anymore. She endures the pain in silent resignation, only an occasional cry escaping, and Regina sees her eyes when the flames shift, sees her gaze rest on the woman across the room, and the girl still says nothing.

 

The fire licks at the side of her face and she gasps, and magic surges through Regina, shielding her from the flames as she makes her way across the room to the girl. “What’s your name?” she calls out through the dull roar of the flames.

 

“Aurora!” the girl shouts, and Regina blinks, recognizing the name and the story at once. Maleficent’s last act of cruelty had been for naught, it seems. The girl has escaped her sleeping curse and Regina had found Maleficent dead beneath the library earlier in the week, struck down by what appears to be one of the Dark One’s trinkets. She’d been vaguely disappointed to see one of the few people she’d thought of as a friend gone, but she feels no loyalty to her cause.

 

She _wants_ to help this girl, this girl who isn’t Emma’s friend or Henry’s friend or anyone at all to either of them. This girl who no one would know if she ignores or aids, and she brushes aside her doubts and removes her shield and reconstructs it around Aurora instead. It won’t cover them both while they remain in different realms, but Regina is accustomed to fire and burns and Aurora is still young, gentle and innocent as Snow had been when Regina had given her a poisoned apple and told her to take a bite, and she doesn’t deserve this agony.

 

“Thank you!” the girl calls to her, and she’s rewarded with a smile that twinges in all the wrong places. “Who are you?”

 

She awakens before she can answer, her skin burning still, and she’s applying the salve to her sides when she realizes that the magic she’d used for Aurora hadn’t felt wrong at all.

 

She takes her phone from its cradle again, hits redial, and waits until Emma’s bleary voice mumbles a greeting before she speaks. “You stopped fighting for us,” she accuses, hugging the jacket tighter to her. “You gave up and you fled. And I…I do understand that I’m difficult to love, and that I’d hurt you quite a bit before you’d gone.” She hears Emma’s breathing steadying out on the other end, attentive and silent, and she begins again haltingly. “I’ve never…I’ve never fought for anyone but myself.” She’d struggled to endure as a child, as a bride, as a queen; and even the rare times when she’d cared for someone else, she’d put herself first, focused on her own needs because no one else seemed to. “And I haven’t even been doing that since you left.”

 

“Regina…” Emma sounds so weary, so helpless that it only firms Regina’s resolve.

 

“I know you can’t struggle through this anymore, Emma. And I won’t force you to.” She smiles a smile that no one can see. “It’s my duty from now on. Fighting for you, for Henry, and for me.” _Lessening your burden, Emma Swan. Is that enough for you?_ “I refuse to forfeit everything that matters to me anymore.”

She hangs up the phone before Emma can respond and heads to the kitchen to make some coffee. Then she finds her garage and starts her car, knowing without experience exactly where Town Hall is located.

 

Henry calls just after dinner.

 

\--

 

“Mom drove all the way back to Storybrooke that night before she turned around and came back to Boston,” Henry reports, and he’s sunshine and magic in her life and everything she’s ever dreamed of, the precocious, loving boy she’d somehow managed to raise and been empty inside without. “Sometimes she tells me to get in the car and we make it onto the freeway before she changes her mind. _Again_.” He sighs with all the exasperation of an adolescent, and Regina feels her lips curl up into an involuntary smile.

 

“Don’t tell her that!” She hears the faint protest from the other line and her smile falters.

 

She forces it back onto her face. “I do believe you aren’t in any danger now, Henry. I suppose your mother will bring you back when she’s ready.”

 

“I miss you,” Henry says, sniffling into the phone.

 

Tears spring to her face. “I know, love. I miss you too.” She tells him about the town now, about this next stage to the curse where they’re still themselves but in a new realm, where he’ll be going to a formal school and the tavern is a bed and breakfast and he has something called an Xbox in his room.

 

He’s dismayed by the information. “Wait, so all the other children in my year got the Avengers movie cursed into their memories? That’s not fair. Mom says that we have to wait until next week to see it!”

 

“Maybe we’ll move up that date,” Emma acknowledges on the other end. It might mean nothing, Regina reminds herself, might be nothing more than Emma yielding to Henry’s best pouting face. It certainly doesn’t mean that they’re planning on returning anytime soon.

 

And Henry goes on talking, oblivious- or purposefully so, perhaps, since her son _is_ a master manipulator- to the tension between his mothers as he tells Regina about their weeks in Boston, about sightseeing and getting to know a world he’s only really seen from afar. His home doesn’t exist anymore, not as he remembers it, but he is unfazed. “I can still ride horses in Storybrooke, right? And practice archery with Snow and play with my friends by the water?”

 

“Yes, of course.”

 

“So nothing changes except the castle. And Mother?” He lowers his voice, sounding embarrassed as he admits, “I don’t think I liked the castle very much. It was… A house sounds nice. I like our family together.”

 

“As do I,” she murmurs, and wonders when they’ll get their wish.

 

\--

 

She doesn’t speak to Emma again and Emma doesn’t speak to her, but she passes on Snow’s phone number when Henry requests and swallows down jealousy that Emma might speak to her mother tonight. No. Emma has spent long enough supporting them all, and now it’s Regina’s turn to silently support Emma, for as long as she stays away.

 

At night, the fire feels more subdued than usual and when Aurora asks for her name, she gives it and watches as the girl’s eyes round. “Then you’re…the evil queen?”

 

“I was,” she says, and she doesn’t feel very evil or queenly anymore, and even her hate is receding with her newfound determination to find her new normal in this town. She drives to work and the workers at her office have stopped flinching when she walks past, and she doesn’t attract nearly as many glares as she had on her first day. She’s gaining a reputation as a stickler for efficient work and an unforgiving attitude toward those who would shirk their duties, still a queen even without a kingdom. But the townspeople are working, the town is grinding along smoothly, and there are fewer and fewer challenges to her so-called authority each day.

 

She visits Granny’s on her third morning working and Red greets her with a loud, “Good morning, Madame Mayor!” and a croissant as the other denizens of the diner watch wide-eyed. Snow sits across from her and asks her if she’s spoken to Emma much. She doesn’t respond quickly enough and compassion flickers across Snow’s face, and for a moment she’s right back to wanting her former stepdaughter’s head on a platter.

 

Charming storms into her office one day demanding answers that Snow hasn’t had the courage to give to him, and she says simply, “How do you think we broke the curse?” and he spits out a curse at her and leaves and returns the next day to apologize. Apologize, to _her_! She nearly laughs and sneers at the Charming family honor but instead ( _Emma’s Father, Henry’s Grandfather_ ) she forces a smile and accepts with grace.

 

Henry calls every night to give her a detailed rendition of his day, and she can always hear Emma nearby, close enough to listen to their conversation even though she still hasn’t asked to speak to Regina. It infuriates her and it frustrates her and it makes her want to demand answers and rage and weep, but instead she struggles to keep her voice steady as she finishes off her conversations, “And send your mother my love.” She sleeps in Henry’s bed most nights, wrapped in his blanket with Emma’s jacket folded on her pillow.

 

“What happened to you?” Aurora asks, her eyes guileless and free of accusation, only curiosity.

 

Regina stares into the orange-white mass of flames around them. “I fell in love,” she says.

 

\--

 

Her dreams have no fire in them for the first time in five weeks, and instead vague memories spiral into each other and tell a story she’s never lived. Emma, mouthing off to Cora as Daniel falls in the background. Henry riding the horse she’d once saved Snow from, as a child Snow ages in her castle. Emma kissing her forehead as she tosses and turns in bed. Henry sitting with Snow at Granny’s, her father solemn in her study on Mifflin Street. Her heart aches and twists and she wakes up with a vague sense of emptiness she can’t place and the strong scent of the pancakes she’d dreamed of in Granny’s.

 

She sniffs, frowning, because that smell is more apparent now, and only then does she hear a thump coming from down the hall.

 

 _Intruders._ She’d known it was only a matter of time before neighborhood hooligans targeted her house, and she scowls, tugging Henry’s tennis racket out from its place and wielding it like a sword as she creeps out of his room and down the hall to the sounds of movement in her room.

 

She throws open the door and smashes the racket forward just as Henry shouts, “Mother! It’s me! It’s me!” Her magic reacts in time and she’s bouncing the racket harmlessly off of a shield of light before she drops both, reaching for Henry as he throws his arms around her and holds on so tightly that she can’t breathe.

 

“Henry, Henry, Henry,” she chants, and she’s pulling him even closer, kissing his cheeks and whispering, “I love you,” over and over again, tears spilling down her cheeks as he whimpers, “I love you, too, Mother,” and they don’t let go for a long, long time.

 

“We got in after midnight,” he explains. “Mom didn’t want to wake you up so she tried to magic the door open-“ He scrunches up his face. “I think you might need a new lock.” And she laughs, she has to laugh because Henry is hereand they’ve found their way back to her and Emma, Emma is _here_ at last and she can feel resentment dissipating at that knowledge alone. “Anyway, we saw that you were in my bed so we took yours for the night.”

 

She remembers her dream, thinks back to Emma’s kiss against her forehead and how real it had seemed. “I see,” she murmurs into his hair. “Is Emma downstairs?”

 

He nods. “She’s so _happy_ , Mother. I haven’t seen her smile- really smile- since you saved me and she saved you and we left the kingdom. And now she’s making pancakes and she can’t stop smiling and…” He grins up at her. “I think she missed you _a lot_.”

 

“I’ll bet she did,” Emma says from the hall, and Regina twists around so quickly that Henry slides out from her embrace and slips past Emma, down the hall and the stairs to the kitchen.

 

“Emma,” she breathes, drinking her in like a parched traveler spotting a mirage in the desert. Emma looks…different, somehow. Paler, thinner, with circles heavy under her eyes; but Henry’s right, her smile is shining so bright that Regina can barely see the rest of her.

 

“Hi,” she says, flapping her hand from side to side in a wave.

 

“You’re here,” Regina says dumbly, and of course only Emma Swan can leave her inarticulate like this, speechless and unable to do much more than stare.

 

Emma shrugs uncertainly. “So it turns out…I guess you calling me a fool all the time eventually stuck. Because I’m kind of an idiot.” Her smile turns sheepish, a shadow crossing her face. “You were right. I did give up. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone anymore. I fucked up so much…I fucked you up, too.”

 

Perhaps it’s too soon, but she’s already pulling Emma to her, sliding her hands around Emma’s too-small waist and feeling her exhalation in response. “No.” She’s so accustomed to blaming others for her faults, to shifting the blame to Snow or Rumpel or a dozen people who might have had a hand in her self-destruction but were never the hands to execute it. No, that had been Regina herself, and it feels sour and unfair to allow Emma to take on this burden. “You saved me, Emma. You _changed_ me.” She doesn’t feel like a stranger in her own skin anymore, an evil queen with no future beyond the hopelessness of vengeance. She can look at Henry and Emma now and see a future, one she’s been able to take the reins of on her own only because of the woman in her arms.

 

“I don’t know where you got the idea that you’re not easy to love,” Emma whispers into her ear, her cheek pressed against Regina’s. “You are a royal pain in the ass most of the time- literally!” she says, delighted with herself, and Regina knows Emma can feel the smirk stretching across her face. “But jesus, Regina, loving you has been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. And you…I don’t know how I’m supposed to reconcile the fact that I love you with everything you’ve done before now.”

 

“Ah.” And there’s the rub. It’s why Emma’s caved to pressure, why Regina knows that she can’t hate her for running. It’s the impossibility of loving a witch, a murderer, an evil queen.

 

Emma pulls back, her eyes pleading. “Tell me how, Regina. Tell me how I’m supposed to forget it all.”

 

There’s no answer that suffices, no defense worth giving, and Regina murmurs, “I can’t do that,” and holds tightly to her hands, longs to kiss her one last time. Because this is it, there’s nothing to say that can change the reality of who she is and who she was, and she won’t put Emma into another situation where she sees no other option but to run.

 

She isn’t who she was, and it’s enough for her right now; but she can’t change the past that shaped her or that brought her family together. She won’t give the people she loves a lie, not even when Emma is pleading with her for one, and she cares too much about this impossible savior who’d stumbled into her castle one day and rewritten her life to succumb to the easier illusion. Even if it means losing her. She’s worth- _they’re_ worth- too much for that.

 

But Emma is leaning in again, the smile back on her face and her eyes bright with hope still, bright with the energy that Regina falls in love with over and over again, and she whispers against her lips, “I know, Regina.”

 

And perhaps it’s enough. Perhaps they’re enough, not quite the people they’re meant to be but well on their way regardless, and Regina’s eyes are drifting closed in contentment and Emma’s lips are so soft, curved into a smile and gentle, teasing, with the promise of so much more. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! (8
> 
> Loads of thanks to Liz, who persuaded me to write this in the first place, to NK and MM and Maia and all the people who've walked me through chunks of this story when I was stuck, and of course to all of you! Swan Queen fandom is intimidatingly talented and I admit to being super insecure about even trying to write anything for y'all, but you've been incredibly welcoming and enthusiastic and hearts- hearts in my eyes, guys. <333 Let's keep in touch! I'm @ scullysummers on Tumblr, and though I don't think I'll be writing another longfic for at least a couple more months, after life settles down, I do have some shorter fics in the works rn.
> 
> I'd still love to hear what you thought of the fic, if you're so inclined!


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